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Mealtime for parents can be one of the trickiest things for kids. I have over the years done many things to get my kid to eat the food I provide for her. Depending on the age of the kid also depends determines what technique is used. I’ve literally tried everything to get my kid to eat a healthy meal over the years so here are some things that I think can help along the way!
1) Make a plan with them. I usually sit down on Saturday and plan out the dinners for the week. I will incorporate the kids who live in my house at the time with suggestions. I gently remind them of healthy things that they like or things that will bring balance besides pizza all the time. Have them make the meal plan with you. Here’s a great way to stay organized for meal plans! Also if you sign up for my newsletter I give you a free month-long meal plan with kid-friendly foods and a way to write down your shopping list for the week.
2) Teach them to cook with you! I will say with this one my daughter was so little and I always made her a part of my cooking adventures. I made Saturday mornings our special big breakfast days and had her there right with me teaching her how to cook. Getting involved with the cooking helps kids to feel empowered to understand how food works. This does take time but it’s worth it in the end. Over the years my daughter has fallen in love with the process of cooking and helps me especially when I’m baking for birthdays!
3) Food can be very boring so why not make it fun! Sometimes when we serve our kids we are so tired at the end of the night or we just don’t want to be creative it can be hard to think of things. Here are some cute cookie cutters you can use to make fun shapes from the food! You can use it on sandwhiches, veggies, or fruit. You can have them have a race to eat a food they may not like. When my daughter was 2 I wanted to have her eat rasberries. She refused to eat them so I put one rasberry on each finger and challenged her to a race. I made it such a silly game to this day she loves to eat rasberries.
4) Food exposure is a huge thing for kids. When my daughter was very young I would on purpose take her to different restraunts. I’m a bit of a foodie myself so even though I didn’t have a huge budget at the time I would find ways to expose her to different kinds of foods from different cultures. We would go to Japanese, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, or Mongolian. I would take every opportunity to just get her around different tastes and smells. She would mainly get rice but I would let her have a tast of what I ordered and it helped her build a pallet that was a little bit more expanded. We when moved out of the country for a few months I had her try as many local dishes as I could so she could build a connection to the people around her. There were things she liked and things she didn’t like but at least she had tried it.
5) Try a bite rule. I have a try a bite rule. Basically if I cook a new food and the kids have never eaten it before whether it’s my daughter or my neices and nephews I tell them to have one big bite and if they don’t like it they don’t have to eat it. I also say to them I don’t make yucky food. I only make yummy food. Sometimes it’s the way we talk about food that can put someone off from it. For example if one of the older kids at the table says they don’t like it then the younger kids automatically say ooo I don’t like it either even if they haven’t tried it. I say that’s impossible I don’t make yucky food 🙂 I’ve convienced many a 4 year old to try something that was new this way. Usually the continual exposure helps them to create a positive association with food. When they are young enough to start solids I try and start with veggies and then work my way to fruits. Then with toddlers even if you just put the food on their plate and they feel it and smell it it helps with the over all connection with food. I have met many toddlers who are pretty stubborn about food but it’s ok. When language develops enough in your child you will be able to put stronger boundaries around food expectations.
6) Grow some food. In my dreams I’m a farmer with a beautiful garden however in real like I don’t have time to learn all the ends and out of having a garden just yet. Someday though I’m determined to gardern once again. I use to have a small garden when my daughter was young but it got killed off by slugs pretty quickly. Since then we have been in small condos or houses with no room for gardens. However I have done some potted tomatos over the years I’ve also tried a cucumber or two. All that to say it doesn’t have to grow huge amounts of food to be effective. Take a pot or two and help your kids learn where food comes from. Have them plant tomatos or cucumbers in the summer. This will take some of the mystery out of where food comes from. Also usually kids get excited about picking and tasting the veggies they grow. Here are some cute garden items to start an herb garden. With an herb garden kids can explore different flavors and you can teach them why we use herbs in cooking!
8) Buying the groceries! I think the funnest trips to the grocery store where when my daughter insited on writing out the grocery list. She was so invested in going through the list and making sure we had all the food we needed for the week. Her excitement about going to find all the items like a teasure hunt was infectious. When she was too little to write I had her draw the different things that were on our list. Later she got good at writing out the words and she would be the one that was in charge of marking off the items on the list. This helped her be invested in creating a positive connection to what we bought. I would always make sure we had veggies and fruits on the list and she was in charge of picking them out. I taught her how to pick the best fruits and vegtables out. She loved it and it helped later when I was making dinner to point out all the things that she had helped me pick out. Here is a cute book I found for toddlers to help make their experience more fun!
9) Choosing the recipe! I love pinterest so much for all my recipe needs. Often times I will tell my daughter to look up recipes and see if there’s anything that looks good to her so we can make it. From start to finish I have her gather all the ingedients and we prepare it together. She learns how to read measurements and becomes invested in the taste. I only cook yummy food so if we don’t like how it turns out I will ask her what we can do to make it a bit more tasty. She has also helped me cook some of my family favorites like my moms famous burritos here’s the recipe. I’m not only passing down my love of cooking but getting her invested in how it tastes. This motivates her to eat what shes made.
(even though he hasn’t tried it) I ignore that and ask him to tell me what nose is in Spanish. I just start putting the food on the fork and shovel it in between teaching him words. By the end of it he doesn’t even realize he ate the entire time 😂 Get creative it’s fun to incorporate good food habits as a kids so later on in life they adjust better to any situation they come upon! Here is a great way to start a conversation around the dinner table!
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