Ideas For My Pocket: a Support Group for Families: It’s Not Icky! Don’t Be Picky!

Some children are great eaters! Others are plain out picky! We parents want them to get the nutrition they need, to grow properly and be healthy. Instead of a fight, we want peace at mealtime!

1. Start babies off liking food. A mom would do well to put off solid foods until a baby’s system is ready for it. When a baby first begins eating table food, start teaching her to be a good eater. Start with very bland foods and with each bite of pureed squash or sweet potatoes, say “Yummm!” Help this be her response to eating. Don’t introduce the sweet fruits until much later, after she eats yellow vegetables, green vegetables and even plain cereals well.

It is hard to not let your baby taste the good stuff early on, but you are doing her a favor! One mother gave her baby a taste of ice cream at 6 months and regretted it ever after. That baby had the worst sweet tooth of all her kids! She was the child who had more colds, earaches, and even tubes in her ears.

Remember that young children like their food separated. They get confused when it is all mixed up. If you serve a casserole or a one dish meal, simply divide up the food into piles on her plate. One mother points out, “Here is a carrot bite. Here is a noodle bite.” Young children seem to need to see the separation. Also give them small portions to start with.

2. Not too much attention. Parents can feel a lot of exasperation when a child refuses to eat or chooses only unhealthy foods to eat. For the most part, healthy children will not starve; and if eating does not turn in to a power struggle, a child will get the nutrition he or she needs. Yes, there are exceptions and special circumstances, but normal healthy children crave what they need, and they make sure they get it. Growth spurts find them eating a lot; and conversely, at times their bodies do not need so much. The trick is to not make too big of an issue over either. If you consistently provide a variety of foods prepared differently, you can rest assured that the food is there for your child to eat when he needs it. As long as the child is not filling up on junk food elsewhere, sooner or later, he will usually eat what is before him.

It is better to not talk to others in a child's hearing range about their food concerns. It complicates and escalates the problem if the child gets even negative attention for eating issues.

In the Rollins’ home, no one is allowed to say anything negative about the food. Period. Dad explained how, "Mom works hard to buy and fix our food, and regardless of whether we like it or not, no one is to say a thing about it, for that would hurt Mom’s feelings." If negative words are said, after a reminder at first doesn’t work, the child must pay the normal consequences for bad words, i.e. a bite of soap to clean out the bad words.

Heather tells her children, “If you are going to be picky, you are going to be hungry!” She refuses to have an alternative menu for anyone. After being consistent with this policy for a long stretch of time, children learn to eat what is before them, or they know they will be hungry before the next meal. For example, one of her children does not like rice. When the family has a rice dish, he knows he cannot have something else instead; so he has learned to just eat some. (It is very good practice for later in life, when he will have to politely eat whatever is served him!)

The Mason’s require a child to eat one No-Thank-You Bite of any food she does not care for. That is expected simply as good manners. The Taylor’s call their one bite a “Love Bite,” since Mommy loves you enough to make you good food, and you love her enough to at least try it.

With this approach, eating becomes a positive experience—much like a scientific experiment!
Instead of a negative experience with food, the child actually gets a lot of positive attention while he is eating and examining (And he gets down three bites of good food)!

5. Get Creative. Nanette appealed to the imaginations of her children when she held up a piece of broccoli and called it a little tree! Her preschoolers were fascinated with the broccoli trees. “This tree got chopped down!” exclaimed her three-year-old Chris, “I have a whole forest!” He decided that he loved broccoli!

There are “ants on a log” (raisins on peanut-buttered celery) and carrot peel mustaches, lakes of jello, baby cobs of corn. Use your imagination so the kids will pretend then eat!

Mark and I found that our children ate better when we explained some basic nutrition to them. When I read a simple article to them about free radicals, explaining it so they could understand, they better ate berries and whole grains. When I made our salads with spinach leaves and dark green leafy vegetables, explaining to them how many more vitamins and minerals this had over iceberg lettuce, the kids more readily ate them. Once I filled a platter full of colorful fruits and vegetables: purple grapes, red apples, orange tangerines, yellow bananas, orange carrots, etc. Another platter I filled with bland non-colored things such as potato chips, white pasta, white bread, etc. Seeing the two platters side by side, the kids could easily tell which foods were refined and empty of nutrition, and which were the healthy, colorful foods that God created for us to be healthy and happy. Even wheat bread is more colorful and looks more nutritious.

Later (around Halloween), I explained that each sugar molecule was like a little particle with 6 arms, each of which must attach to other food to help it digest. Drawing it, and explaining, helped the children understand better why they should eat a healthy meal full of good foods before they had a little bit of sugar. They knew that if sugar robbed them of all their nutrients, they would be more likely to get sick. (Honey however, with only five such arms—multiplied by thousands in a serving, I explained, requires so much less to help it digest. And it contains enzymes to help it be digested.)

As a child, Pamela’s mother had tried to sneak some wheat sprouts into the muffins and other baked items. Though it was out of a good motive—that of making the kids healthy—Pamela and her siblings did not like to be tricked into it. So when Pamela tried sprouting, she let her kids help and explained to them how healthy the results were, and let them taste the sprouts and choose them on their sandwich. Pamela also found that when she would urge them to eat their cabbage, “since I don’t want you to have stomach cancer someday!” it was much better than a power struggle trying to force them to eat their vegetables. The message she left, rather than being “Do this because I am the Mom!” was “I love you, so I want you to be healthy and happy!”