How to get child to try new foods?
My 3.5 yo's food preference is for anything breakfast (eggs, cereal, waffles, pancakes), fish sticks, chicken nuggets, hotdogs, bread or white rice. He will not eat anything else. He refuses to even taste anything.
Whatever we serve which is outside the Zachary Menu, he immediately says, "I don't like it". And our response is, "You haven't even tried it! How can you possibly know!"
I firmly believe in not cooking a separate meal for my children. So more often than not, our son does not eat dinner (and often skips his lunch too, refusing to eat what we've packed for him). When he wakes, he's famished and he gorges on breakfast.
How do I break my son of his rigid and limited eating habits?
10 Answers
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I can empathize with both you - I refuse to cook separate meals too - and your son - I was a picky eater too.
Along the lines of what mamapajama wrote, I can tell you that while my parents like to tell the story of how at our local Chinese restaurant I'd order a club sandwich (!), as an adult I'm more or less the opposite. I remember refusing to try things and I was sure that my parents were always plotting to get me to eat yucky things. It may be that your son really doesn't like food that's anything other than bland.
I've read that a glass of milk and some whole wheat bread has most of what a child needs nutritionally, and that a way to defuse tension at the dinner table is to do as mamapajama suggests - put out healthy food that he won't eat, healthy food that he will eat, and let him decide what and how much to eat. Repeat. Hope for the best and avoid fearing the worst...
Good luck!
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Involving the kids on purchasing and preparing the food (still need to try growing it too) has worked for us. Another strategy is camouflage: cover the food in cheese, mix it with a favorite dish or blend it into a sauce.
Still, it has been a struggle. Good luck!
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I have 4 kids - 2 of them were like your son at that age. My son (who is now 15) was quite small and underweight for his age when he was 3 and I worried a lot because he refused to try anything. I read a book that claimed that the way to get children to eat vegetables was to make sure they were familiar. The author recommended putting vegetables on a child's plate every day. Don't make a big deal about making them eat them - just make them available, every day. I did this - and sometimes it was still a struggle ("eeeew the broccoli touched my chicken nugget...") but at 15 he sits down to a whole plate of broccoli. There are still things he doesn't like (hates all pasta - how can this be??) and he'll never win an award for the most adventurous eater, but he's eating a balanced diet and I (almost) never make him separate meals. Good luck!
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I agree that to continually offer a wide variety of food is important. But I've also had great success with this tact.
Have the picky child help you prepare the meal. The process of handling the food and getting really familiar with what it's like helps them to not be so fearful of something new of suspicious. Talk about the food as you prepare it. Where it comes from, how it grows, why you like it or how you used to not like it but now you do. Have them touch it as much as possible while they are preparing it. Let them cut broccoli with kitchen shears, snap asparagus, cut up the food. You are there supervising so it's safe.
This process has made many foods acceptable to my son that he was previously unwilling to try.
Good luck (let us know how this goes if you try it!)
I just wanted to say that I do agree that this is a wonderful thing to try but that I tried it without success. I just wanted to warn you in case it happens because it was extra frustrating when he wouldn't eat anything after the extra effort it took to get him involved in everything.
- sweethi, Jan 20, 2010
We've been cooking with our toddler (now 2.5yrs) for a while now. In the beginning, I found it really stressful. It made everything take longer, I had to answer a million questions, and he was getting in the way instead of being helpful.
But, after a a while, he began to understand how to help, what he can help with, and what he can't help with (i.e. he can stir eggs, but he can't crack them on the bowl, etc.). Also, if you're really committed, you can plan out the meal with the thought of the toddler helping. Do the main prep by yourself, and then let him help for the actual cooking. You could easily do a stir-fry if you chopped all the meat & veggies beforehand, and then just did the actual cooking once everything was ready. Keep trying!
Oh, and nothing's ever surefire. We've certainly had a big long conversation while cooking about how yummy all the veggies look, and then when we sit down at the table he won't even try anything.
- Steve Lacy, Jan 20, 2010
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I'm loving these suggestions!!
I haven't had this problem yet with my son (he's only 9 mos) but here are a few that have been suggested to me or used in our family:
- my grandfather would call you a "faker taster" if you said you didn't like something before trying it. That was kind of the food kiss of death. You didn't want to be known as a "faker taster" so you at least tried the food. As anonymous posted above, you didn't have to eat all of it but you had to try it
- my sister's kids get a second dessert if they've tried a new food at dinner.
- a family member offered a peanut butter sandwich if you didn't like the dinner choice. Using a kid-friendly/plastic knife, you had to make the sandwich yourself. After a few nights of pb sandwiches, other options sounded pretty good
- try new utensils - pink forks, green spoons, a plate with their favorite character on it. They only get to use the new utensil if they're going to eat.
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My almost 3 yr old son is a picky eater too. I guess he comes by it honestly since both my husband and I were too as children. Just as andrea and mamapajama say, take heart that we are both adventurous eaters now. We both grew up with "you don't have to eat it all but you have to try it" from our parents.
As for my son, I have tried the "make things available on his plate but no pressure" method, which rarely works if he even allows us to put it on his plate. Now we say "just in case". We rely on motivators to get him to try new things like he really likes ketchup, or soy sauce (you can dilute), or adding by himself (tiny amounts) of salt and pepper to his food before eating. I know having ketchup with everything isn't the healthiest but many times part way through eating something he forgets to keep dipping. Or the 3rd (or 5th?) time we offer the food, he doesn't need it with the dip anymore and now that food is part of his "menu".
I also notice with my son that he is more adventurous during lunch so we try to introduce new things then instead of dinner. or just to take advantage of days when he just seems more adventurous.
Finally, I have also noticed that my son is more willing to eat/try new things when he isn't grumpy from being hungry at the start of a meal. So we give him a small quantity of comfort foods to get him going and then start introducing new things.
Good luck! I'll definitely be following this question for mores ideas!
The dipping idea really works well with our son too, both for trying new things (i.e. any veggie can be dipped in salad dressing or mild curry sauce) and it also gets us a slightly less messy meal (e.g. pancake pieces get dipped in syrup, hot dog pieces get dipped in ketchup and mustard).
- andrea, Jan 15, 2010
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Thanks for all the comments. We have been trying the "put things on his plate" tactic, but so far with no success.
Another tactic I've heard is if he doesn't eat his dinner, then to offer it again for breakfast the next morning, and conceivably for every meal thereafter until he eats it. But I personally don't believe in doing this - it seems a tad cruel.
I have tried "rewarding" him by offering him a Flintstone chewable vitamin if he does taste something. But that seems almost backward. He probably needs his vitamin supplement more when he's not eating a balanced meal. And I also don't want mealtime to turn into a negotiation battle. "If you take one bite, you can have one candy...".
Another practice that we've adopted is that he gets a proportional amount of dessert to what he's eaten for dinner. If he ate no dinner, then no dessert. If he only ate 1/4 of his dinner, he gets 1/4 of dessert.
In any case, I'm relieved to hear that milk and wheat bread should sustain him. At least he's eating that much.
How funny! Our son will do almost anything for a Flintstone vitamin too. It makes me wonder if we should be giving them to him! (And now I wonder what that says about me as a parent - if my son loves a thing and thus I think it's probably bad... ;)
- andrea, Jan 15, 2010
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My daughter is 2.5 years old so this might be too "childish" for a 3.5 years old, but what works well with her is feeding her the food she doesn't want to eat by herself while telling the name of someone (or something) for each spoonful she eats: "one spoon for Mommy, one spoonful for Daddy, etc.". She comes up with tons of ideas about whom the next spoonful will be for and she eats up her whole plate like that.
Eating with unusual ustensils (e.g. a measuring spoon) is also fun for her and will make her eat.
Sometimes we read books to her while she eats... If she's distracted enough she'll let us give her the first bite of the food she refuses to eat, realize it tastes good and then she'll want to eat the rest.
In other words distraction has been key. This isn't ideal but at least she eats and gets accustomed to the tastes of new foods.
Oh Yes! The camouflage tactic! I forgot that one. It's also a great one.
I'm of the philosophy that you need many wepons in your parenting arsenal. When one gun doesn't work, whip out another and try that. Keep trying until you find what works. Even going back to somthing that didn't work last week and trying it again can be a success.
- Lindsay, Jan 20, 2010