November 29, 2011 Do Something New: The Sane Approach to Solving Your Picky Eating Problem
If you want your children to change how they eat, you're going to have to change how you interact with them around food.
That might sound like the most obvious statement you've ever heard, but I can't tell you how many parents I meet who are stuck in a routine that's not working. (You might say they've fallen and they can't get up!)
It doesn't matter whether you want your kids to:
- Try new food.
- Eat more fruits and vegetables.
- Tolerate different foods on their plates.
- Eat more food at meals.
- Behave better at the table.
- Change how they eat in any way.
To get something new, you've got to do something new.
You can't keep using the same parenting strategies and expect different results.
That's the definition of insanity.
- Constantly saying two more bites?
- Still bribing your kids with brownies to get them to eat broccoli?
- Forever fixing your kids' favorites but hoping they'll try something new?
When parenting techniques succeed, they become obsolete. You can stop using them because children perform the desired behavior on their own.
In other words, if trading peas for pie were a successful strategy, it would sell your peanut on the pleasure of eating peas. You wouldn't have to continually remind her (i.e. bribe her) to eat them.
Some parenting strategies obviously crash and burn.
You ask your children to eat their peas and they don't.
Other tactics tank more subtly: When you bribe your kids with pie to get them to eat their peas, they eat them. When you don't, they won't.
Even when these tactics seem to work—brownies can get your kids to eat their broccoli, I'm not disputing that—they don't get you any closer to your ultimate goal: producing a voluntary (and happy) veggie-eater. Indeed, sometimes these tactics send you farther afield. Research shows that kids develop a negative association with foods they've been forced to eat.
So what should you do?
1) Identify your goal. Think BIG.
Move beyond the immediate meal and think about the lessons you want your children to learn for a lifetime of healthy eating. Then, ask yourself if your short-term strategies are helping you attain those long-term goals. They might just be getting in your way.
For instance, if you always prepare foods you know your child will eat, you're not doing her any favors. Serving the same preferred foods repeatedly won’t teach your child to eat new foods. It will reinforce her limited palate instead. Read House Building 101 to get out of this rut.
2) Break the task into small, doable steps.
Want your kids to try new foods? Maximize your chances for success by thinking SMALL. That's the idea behind The Happy Bite.
Recognize that the road to eating new foods might begin with a touch, a sniff, and then a very small taste. It might mean introducing your kids to familiar foods presented in a new ways: nuggets cut into new shapes, pasta in varied colors, and different flavored cookies.
For ideas read:
- A New Approach to Teaching Tots to Try New Foods
- Why Some Kids to Play With Their Food.
- Why Some Kids Should Spit.
- Take a Walk on the Wild Side
3) Celebrate small successes.
Instead of being disappointed that your child only tasted the tortollini—you were hoping to get a whole meal out of the deal—remember to reward and reinforce each step until you have built up to the bigger accomplishment. After all, back when your kids were crawlers you didn't wait until they could walk on their own before you began cooing and congratulating them. No. You praised each small, wobbly step along the way. Beginning eaters need encouragement too.
Every time you feed your kids you’re shaping their habits.
The only question that remains is this: what are you going to teach them? And if your kids don't eat the way you want them to, you may be teaching the wrong lessons. Read Conscious Parenting.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
Reader Comments (3)
Thanks for a timely post! My recent three-year-old has never been an adventurous eater, but even so we are heading in the wrong direction. He seems to be reducing his repetoir of acceptable food by the day, instead of the slow increase that we are used to seeing.
We are not bribing or pushing him to eat and we serve him taste bites of everything we make for the rest of the family for every meal, which he picks at but usually does not eat. He will only eat a hand full of the meals (pasta, pizza, pancakes) we have on our regular menu now. He does always have the choice of unsweetened baby cereal, since we want him to be able to benefit from the dinner experience and, of course, not go hungry. To his credit he eats a great variety of fruits. I have taken to putting bowls of fruit on the table for dinner (instead of bringing them out for desert) so that he will learn that it is worth checking out the selection of dinner food and not reject it upfront.
He loves helping out in the kitchen and cooking, but that does not at all translate to him wanting to even try the food. He grows tomatoes and some other veggies that he proudly serves the rest of the family, but that would never cross his own lips. We don't give him candy, but we bake a baked treat like muffins or cookies once a week or so, and he is not yet introduced to most of the junkier snacks. (On a side note: I bet I could get him to try a hundred new things in one day if I went down the candy-and-chips-section of the store - he has a sweet tooth that kid.Those sweet yogurts are starting to look tempting!)
Well what ever we are doing right now is taking us further away from our goals. He is excluding more foods - no beans, no meat, no rice, no quinoa, no eggs, just to name the ones that have gone out of fashion this fall - and not adding any new ones. He is also less accepting of the ones he still eats: like carrots are only ok if raw now.
I am not sure what to do. Like you wrote: Using the same strategies and expecting different results is crazy. But on the other hand hanging in there and trying to trust in that he will get over this stage in his own time if we just keep our cool... I mean he is a healthy, energetic, happy little kid. I just wish he would eat his dinner already!!!
I love your blog, but I have to say my 2 year old resists all attempts at new food. I literally cannot get her to try cookies, chocolate cake, etc things that I know she would love. The things she eats are mostly great (with of course mac and cheese and grilled cheese etc as her very favorites). She loves apples, berries, plan unsweetend yogurt, avocado, sweet potato, regular potato, natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread, and of course, waffles bagels, cereal, milk. But getting her to move beyond that is impossible. I am at a loss. I pretty much cater to her palate for breakfast and lunch, and offer whatever we are having for dinner (which she basically always rejects). Then she wakes up multiple times in the middle of the night full of grouchy. We sometimes let her have plain yogurt with blueberries right before bed if she has gone particularly long without eating, and then she will sleep all night. I feel like a terrible mother.
Thy and Courtney:
First, Courtney, you are NOT a terrible mother. I know it's easy to feel bad, food is so caught up in nurturing/motherhood that it's almost impossible to separate the two. A terrible mother doesn't show the care, compassion and concern you so obviously exhibit.
As for the food jags and restricting that both of you describe: the key is not to take food jags too seriously. I know it's hard when you see your child eliminate foods left and right but the more seriously you take the jags the more serious they become. Don't make any assumptions about what your child will and will not eat -- provide foods in the rotation that you would otherwise. Give your child one alternative to the meal that is bland, boring and always the same (no short order cooking here) so that your child won't go hungry but don't make any other concessions. Your child has to decide to come around and eat what is offered and kids do that in their own time, when there is no pressure and no attention to the non-eating. At the same time, make a deliberate effort to rotate through the foods that you do offer (variety=different not new) so that the mindset is different foods on different days and give your kids a limited choice at each meal. In other words, offer two side dishes for your child to choose from (you decide the main course). Do this for all meals including breakfast.
Courtney: Rather than let your child go to bed hungry and risk having her wake up grouchy, or giving in to yogurt with blueberries before bed, try instituting a regular snack before bed that is small. Use a non-preferred food so it doesn't become a favored alternative and don't make the snack so big that your child isn't hungry in the morning. I recommend a small glass of milk (unless your daughter would rather drink milk than eat anything).
Finally, pay attention to snacks. It's important to limit snacks and to create gaps of time in between meals and snacks when there is no food. Kids have to come to the table hungry in order to eat well.
There are other things you can do but without more of the specifics this is all I can offer.
Good luck,
Dina