5 “Simple” Ways to Enjoy Dinner with your Picky Eater (withOUT giving in!)
Does this scene sound familiar?
You race home from “all the activities”️🤸🩰⚽, wrangle/bribe the kids into playing by themselves for 30 minutes so you can make and present a meal (with all the qualities of a ‘healthy & well-balanced meal as told to you by everyone on social media), and get them to come to the table…which is kind of like herding small kittens.
You create what you think and hope is a delicious meal 🍽…you logically (but mistakenly) think, “It’’s food they liked yesterday. It’s the right color/shape/size, and it’s on their favorite plate.”
ALL the things. (are you stressed out and exhausted yet??)
The little darlings sit down and one says, “Eww!!” like you served them worms and crickets🦗, and they push it away, and of course, the others have to copy That one!
And, now, you either want to cry, run away and hide, or lose your sh@#$ 😡after working so hard to make it ‘just so’...
If you are struggling with a ‘picky eater’, I am here to offer you some ideas💡💡 to help you learn to enjoy your meal times again!! To be sure, these are just a starting point and working with a responsive feeding therapist can provide deeper insights specifically for you and your family.
I have been a pediatric speech language pathologist for 35 years, with a passion for helping you understand your child’s needs and help them discover their love for food and ways to expand their limited diet. I have trained with the Get Permission Institute https://getpermissioninstitute.com/ and many other renowned speech and feeding specialists https://www.new-vis.com/ https://pediatricfeedingnews.com/about/ https://cariebert.com/ over the length of my career, which offers me a unique perspective in helping children learn to feel safe exploring new foods.
Every child and family situation is different, and having a person who you can share your concerns with is essential to tailoring success for your child and family. So, here we go…
Contrary to popular opinion and your grandmother’s advice… it’s not our job to ‘get our kids to eat’! The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) says, “Parents provide, children DECIDE.”
Ellyn Satter, internationally known nutritionist and psychotherapist, who created the Division of Responsibility (DOR) principle states, “Parents decide what, where, and when. Children decide IF and HOW MUCH.” (www.ellynsatterinstitute.org) Her website will help you with setting boundaries around meals, which is what the DOR is all about.
Now, there’s a whole lot more I can say about this idea because it’s never so cut and dry!! But, we’d be here for waaay too long.
What I can say is that your job ALWAYS includes providing foods the child feels safe with. Not necessarily what you want them to eat, but something they can enjoy being at the dinner table with the family.
But…you don’t have to make them eat.
Which leads us to the second tip…
2. Children need to feel safe to eat and enjoy eating. Felt safety is the #1 concept that will improve your child’s innate desire, or motivation, to eat. Sometimes kids can feel pressure. Pressure = worry.
They can worry when:
they do not know what is being served,
what they will be expected to do,
if they will be pressured to eat, or
they feel like they need to eat to make us happy and get approval from us.
Any of these things can add up to a child riding the worry train, even before they sit down at the table! And sometimes worry shows up as angry or defensive or defiant.
But here’s a news flash… Just as children have worries at the table, parents do too, which can heighten tension at the table. Do any of these thoughts sound familiar to you?
😟Are they eating enough?
😟Are they getting enough protein?
😟Are they going to throw the food off the table?
😟Are they going to have another tantrum?
😟Will I get to eat my meal?
😟Are they going to lose weight?
It's easy to see that your worries can influence how YOU react at the table! We need to unpack your feelings related to feeding your child, including personal and family expectations and your child’s eating and health history.
A Responsive Feeding Approach understands that EVERYONE can worry. That worry cascades into so many other areas. We need to empathize with and understand how we AND our kids are feeling about the mealtime in general and about the foods they enjoy and don’t enjoy specifically.
Again, a feeding specialist (with experience in the responsive approach to feeding) will help you manage this aspect of the mealtime, TOO!!
3. Mealtimes are not just for nourishment.
They are for building relationships through the conversations 🦜and sharing about the day.
They are for exploring food options. This happens naturally at the table when they are watching others eat and prepare their food.
With a safe and happy mealtime, we can create curiosity and motivation for new food trying. 😺
We can introduce the concept of ‘change happens’ from a safe place (which is on someone else’s plate). We all know that children learn by watching, and kids with sensory differences and regulation difficulties need extra grace ⏳and patience to allow them to feel good about trying new things at a pace that feels good to them.
Your child sees what everyone else is eating, how they try a new food, how they are enjoying their food, as well as all the sensory aspects of the food they are observing (looks, smells, texture, size, color).
Activities away from the meal time can be more about actual ‘trying’ of new food; we want mealtimes to be enjoyable and less stressful so they can feel relaxed and take in the information around them.
4. Don’t PUSH into your child’s worry…when there is WORRY, children want the same. Same food, same plate/cup/spoon, same seat, same everything. It’s a way for them to create predictability.
With a responsive feeding therapist, you will learn how to stay at the ‘just right’ level of change without pushing too hard.
I will guide you and your child into understanding that ‘change happens’ AND IT’S OK!
This is something that takes time, because we need to uncover layers and layers of worries, but it is done with patience and a new understanding of behavior and ‘tip toe-ing’ into change.
You provide opportunities for them to experience different foods, even if it's not on THEIR plate. Think about having meals where EVERYONE sits at the table together and serving family style, where your child can serve others, and other ‘mealtime jobs’ you can have your child do.
5. And finally, here’s where you can get started TODAY!!
Listen to yourself tonight at dinnertime (or the next time you are having a meal together) and see how many times you are asking YOUR CHILD to eat, how many times you feel like you are bribing, encouraging, or praising them when they do it, and yelling or punishing when they don’t.
Think about how you would feel if someone were watching your every move at the table? Stressful, isn’t it?😟😟
So, instead, limit how much you are asking them to eat. Limit how much you are focusing on the food on their plate.
And instead of talking about the food, have a conversation about something else instead! Google “Conversation starters at dinner”. I used this link:
https://tinybeans.com/20-questions-to-ask-at-the-dinner-table/ )
Here are some examples:
“Would you rather be a lion or a shark?”
“Who is your favorite superhero/princess?”
“What was your favorite thing about today…and why?”
Decreasing the pressure children feel about eating will eventually help them to feel more relaxed and motivated to eat more (quantity or variety) on their own! It takes consistency as well as cooperation from the others at the table (parents, siblings) who may be so used to doing all sorts of things to ‘get him to eat’.
Remember, creating a peaceful mealtime environment takes time, patience, and understanding, but with these steps, you can begin to transform YOUR dinners into a more enjoyable experience for everyone!
