Making Progress with a Picky Eater
You know those moms who shop almost exclusively at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and who buy all organic stuff and whose kids eat every eclectic meal they serve them? Gosh, I respect those ladies so much. You go girl! I think it’d be amazing to be that on top of our food and nutrition all of the time, but honestly I just don’t have the energy to dedicate there right now. With that being said, food and nutrition are still very important to us. My husband and I are very intentional about what we fuel our bodies with and we want our kids to grow up with a healthy mindset about food and an understanding of what their bodies need to thrive.
Before kids, I was 100% that girl that was like, “Your kids will eat what you feed them. If you never give them another option, they’ll learn to eat what they’re served. So, if they’re eating junk food, that’s on you.” And maybe to an extent that is true, but imagine my surprise when our son turned 1 year old and began to refuse absolutely everything. One week he was eating broccoli and meat and avocado and absolutely anything we put in front of him. The next week he put his nose up to all of it.
Oh, y’all, I was ready. I smeared my war paint on and I was ready to take this kid head to head and get him eating our food again. So a stand off took place. I offered him the healthy food, he turned it away. I didn’t budge, and he didn’t eat. Surely the kid would eventually get hungry and throw a piece of chicken in his mouth. Wrong.
Over 24 long, painful hours later, Beckett seemed perfectly content with still not eating. I continued to offer foods that I deemed acceptable, he continued to choose not to eat. He didn’t complain. He just didn’t eat. I started to freak out to my husband, “Babe! The kid has got to eat! He needs calories!” So, out came the one thing we were confident he would dig into - mac n cheese. Sure enough, the boy scarfed it down. Relief and defeat set in simultaneously.
Next thing you know, my sons diet consists of mac n cheese, grilled cheese, peanut butter, strawberries, protein bars, and dino nuggets. Quite literally, those were the only things he would eat. We continued on this path for over 2 years. Our son has always been rather small and for a big chunk of that time frame we were genuinely concerned that he wasn’t getting enough calroies in his day. We weren’t happy with his diet, but we also just needed him to eat. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Parenting is complicated.
Around the age of 3.5 years old, I began to get fed up. His diet had added a few other staples, none of which I was particularly happy with: goldfish, fruit snacks, fruit loops, sugary yogurts. I started to have major mom guilt that I was feeding my kid a bunch of synthetic processed crap and, more importantly, not teaching him the truths about what his body needs.
So I set out to find all the tips and tricks to making progress with a picky eater, and I got really creative. I started by creating an actual kids menu in a Word Document with pretty pictures and colors and short, simple descriptions. I decided to organize it by nutritional benefits, and created 5 categories my son could focus on: protein, fruits, vegetables, grains, and fats. I gave very simple explanations of how each of these things help your body and why they are important to have in your daily diet. I then wracked my brain for a couple of options in each category that I knew he’d be open to eating and I would also approve of. Our goal was progress, not perfection, people.
I then sat with Beckett and explained the menu to him. I told him how exciting it was going to be to get to pick something out of each category for meals, and then I had a seperate page dedicated to healthy snack ideas. He seemed really excited, and even agreed to work with me on finding a vegetable that he would like. For starters, we decided on making a smoothie that included spinach for him every day.
Next, I created a meal schedule, that gave general guidelines for when we would eat: 7:00am breakfast, 10:00am snack, 12:30pm lunch, 3:00pm snack, 6:00pm dinner. My reasoning was that this would encourage Beckett to eat when food was served, rather than being stingy with it because he knew he could snack throughout the day. It took him a couple days to figure out the rhythm of this, but eventually he started to eat more at each eating time because he knew he had to fill his stomach to happily make it to the next time food would be offered.
I had a friend who teaches at a montessori school reach out and tell me how much it helps kids when they participate in the kitchen. After discussing some ideas with her, I empited out a low-level cabinet of ours that was originally our “baking” shelf, and turned it into the kids shelf. I purchased some nylon kids cutting knives on Amazon, as well as a few other tools. I also moved their non-refridgerated snacks to this level along with their cups and bowls.
Within the first day, my 3 year old and 1 year old were coming to me saying they were hungry and if it was close to a snack time I would instruct them to go pick out a snack from their cabinet. They loved this. They took such ownership in it and would gleefully run to the cabinet and select a snack, running it back to me to open or to pour into a bowl (which they also got out of the cabinet themselves). Less work for me, more ownership for them. This was a definite win-win.
I’ve started to involve Beckett and Cadence much more in meal time. They get to select their foods and stand on chairs pushed up against the counter to help me make it. They cut strawberries themselves and smear their own peanut butter on their bread. They’ve helped bake. They’ve helped make smoothies. Since starting this we’ve already seen such an increase in Beckett’s willingness to try new foods. He has taken a bite of asperagus after we picked it from our garden, and took two bites of celery with peanut butter on it. This would have never been even considered before.
He knowingly drinks spinach in his smoothies every day and has been drastically weaned from processed snacks. We still don’t have the total diet we’re wanting for the kids, but we have been incredibly happy over the past month as we’ve watched Beckett progress, eating healthier foods and having a better understanding of the purpose food serves in our bodies. If you have a picky eater I want you to know, I feel your pain. It can be so challenging to navigate sometimes. Hopefully you can take a few ideas from our recent successes and encourage progress in your little eaters as well.
