Helping Picky Eaters at Home
Picky eating is a common problem among families. Whether you have one picky eater in your family, or multiple picky eaters, read on to learn some strategies that can help!
It’s no surprise that children learn basic life skills from watching the adults in their life complete them. This extends to trying new foods as well! Everyone is more likely to try new foods if they interact with the foods and eat with and around people who are consuming those same foods.
There are multiple steps to introducing new foods in a child’s diet that build on one another. The child must master one step before moving on to the next. Chewing and swallowing new food is the end goal and last step of this process.
Children must tolerate each of these food steps before chewing and swallowing:
Accepting food in the same environment as them without aversion, i.e. allowing the food on their plate.
Touching the food with their fingers/hands
Smelling the food
Putting the food to their lips/near their face
Licking the food
Placing the food in their mouth, then spitting or taking it out
Taking a small bite of the food (with or without swallowing the food, they may spit it out)
Taking a small bite of food, chewing it once, and spitting it out if they want
Taking a small bite, chewing the food three times, and spitting
it out if they want
Taking a small bite, chewing and swallowing
Taking a regular sized bite, chewing and swallowing
Some steps may take your child a long time to master, or they may breeze through a few steps within one meal. The child must achieve one step before moving on to the next. Feeding therapy never skips straight to asking a child to bite and swallow a food unless they choose to do so. Feeding goes at the child’s pace and trying new items stops based on the child’s verbal and nonverbal displays of comfort. Feeding needs to be as low stress as possible for children to be willing to try new foods and that starts with the environment and the adults.
General Feeding Therapy Strategies to Try at Home
Do not “force” feed your child. This can create a stressful mealtime environment and increase food aversions down the road.
Encourage your child to complete the step they are comfortable with, if they’re having a good day, gently encourage the next step, i.e. if they are touching the food with their fingers, demonstrate smelling the food and ask them to do it with you. If they refuse, don’t push them.
Keep mealtimes and feeding as low stress as possible and offer choices when possible or appropriate.
Eat with your child at the same table or area instead of having the children eat separately or earlier than the adults.
Let your child touch, smell, interact, and play with food whenever possible even outside of mealtimes. More exposure will lead to increased willingness to try new foods.
Have the child involved in cooking or meal prep, making it clear they are only the chef and don’t have to try any food unless they want to. Pretend play restaurant and allow your child to play chef and then server.
Use cookie cutters or toothpicks to eat food or change the shape of foods to make new foods more fun and engaging.
Mix preferred and non-preferred flavors when it makes sense i.e. a carrot into ranch or a pretzel into peanut butter. If they don’t want to try nonpreferred food with the dip, demonstrate licking the dip off of the food or try stirring the nonpreferred food and preferred food together.
Encourage the child to serve food onto family member’s dinner plates to expose them to new foods without the pressure of eating them. Serving meals family style is a great way to work on scooping, serving, and extra exposure to food.
Try using fun or kid plates with their favorite character on it, fun utensils with characters or cars unicorns etc or use cups/plates/utensils that are your child’s favorite color.
Have them pick out their plate/bowl/ cup/ utensils and make it exciting, or have specific ones designated that are just for them so they feel special.
Keep discussions about food positive. If you or someone in your house doesn’t like a particular food, try not to draw attention to it or demonstrate mannerisms that show you don’t like it. Instead, keep discussions about food objective, talk about the observations you notice about new foods on the table or their plate. Work together to indicate the food color, name, shape, texture (crunchy or chewy?), firmness (is it hard or soft?), taste (sweet or salty), what food group it belongs in (meat, fruit, etc…)
Try balancing food on your fingers, noses, foreheads or tongues. Use pretend play, pretend one food item is a bed and the other is jumping on the bed. Demonstrate the food jumping off the bed and into your mouth, see if they imitate you but don’t pressure it. Allow your child to feed you and see if you can feed them in return. Bring a doll or stuffed animal and have the child pretend to feed the toy the new food then pretend the toy is feeding the child that same food. Adding an element of fun and light heartedness while demonstrating eating the food takes the pressure off and allows the child to feel in control, which increases the likelihood they’ll try new foods.
Have the child throw out the leftover food on their plate with their hands into garbage even if they didn’t want to eat it during the meal. This helps expose them to the texture of it and often can be a time to demonstrate a “goodbye kiss” to the food and see if they imitate. If they’re not willing to touch the food, have them use a fork or spoon to scrape unfinished food into the garbage.
Want more feeding tips? Check out our blog post: Tips and Tricks to Help Picky Eating