Picky Toddler Help

OnTheMoveWithSteph

I wanted to share my biggest struggle, which is related to food, and see if anyone else can relate or has advice. I have no trouble making healthy meals for myself, but the real challenge comes when it’s time to feed my toddler. She’s very picky and doesn’t like to eat what I prepare. I can’t make two different meals for each sitting, and it feels like a constant battle to get her to eat what’s good for her.

I want to make sure she’s getting the nutrition she needs while still being able to eat healthy myself. I’m just not sure how to balance both without feeling like I’m giving up on either side.

Has anyone dealt with picky eaters? How do you manage making healthy meals that both you and your toddler can enjoy? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

letspaint79

Here's how I handled this with my kids:
Prepare a meal, usually includes something they like.
Make them a plate.
If they finish everything on the plate, they can have more.
If they take a bite of every item like meat, veg, etc., they can have a piece of fruit at the end of the meal.

This works really well for my family. My boys are no longer toddlers but they are willing to try basically anything. They both enjoy eating a variety of foods and my older son even likes spicy food!

I think even if your toddler is picky, they will eat if they are hungry. Let them become hungry before meals. Limit the snacks so they are eager to eat a meal with you.

nossmf

Agreed with limiting snacks before meals.

If your child enjoys something simple to make, like mac 'n cheese, you can prepare a small amount (you can find individual cups at the store) and offer it as incentive for the child to eat AFTER they eat what you give them.

Some people don't like the idea of desserts every day, but my best success getting my kids to try new foods was in letting them help select what the dessert of the day would be, but they do not get any unless they eat at least a minimum amount of whatever I gave them...three bites, half of what's on their plate, etc. This really worked best when one kid agreed, the other didn't...then had to watch the one who agreed enjoying dessert while they did without. That child became much more likely to try the food the next night!

I also had my kids help to select which vegetable would be served at certain meals. They quickly learned which veggies they despised (Brussel sprouts), which they actually enjoyed (corn), and which they could tolerate simply because it was easy to swallow unchewed (peas).

If all else fails, they can swallow the food with an immediate milk/juice chaser to help remove the taste after every bite.

devenmsmith

We are a bit more hardcore on this than a lot of parents but our philosophy is that 1: kids aren’t stupid, and 2: they aren’t going to starve themselves.

We don’t blatantly make food they won’t eat but they do get picky randomly with foods they have eaten before fairly often. If they refuse meals, they don’t get a snack before the next meal. At all. So back to my bullet points, kids aren’t stupid. They know they can afford to refuse food if they anticipate/know a snack is coming at some point. They won’t starve themselves. When push comes to shove, if they truly are hungry, they’ll eat their food, especially if it’s something they have eaten before. Our one daughter does this routinely. She refuses the entire plate and we just say well that’s what we made and that’s all that you are getting. 9/10 times she eventually grabs the plate and eats it, sometimes as much as 30-45 minutes after it was served, but she eventually eats it. Every once and a while she skips the meal entirely and then devours her next meal, but that’s gotten more rare as she’s gotten older.

For new foods, we just ask they try it and they can get a treat after if they do.

We also hide foods in things like pasta sauce. Cook up some carrots and purée them into the sauce. They’ll never know unless they see you do it.

You can also try preparing two meals without really preparing two meals. What I mean by this is easily swappable things. Our kids refuse to eat nearly all cooked veggies, but they will eat nearly all of those same veggies raw. So if we want carrots for dinner, we might cook ours but give the kids raw carrots. Different but at the same time not really. Whole proteins are another easy one to swap. Grill nights my wife typically wants a steak, but the kids and I will usually eat a salmon fillet, but then all the veggies and such will be the same between us. Or keep pasta sauce separate of the meat separate of the noodles. Our one daughter doesn’t like sauce on her noodles, but she eats the meat. So we just mix it all for each individual plate at serving time and then she can skip the sauce. This way it’s catered to our tastes without being completely different.

Lastly, we have also learned to pick our battles. If we cook a whole meal and they see what we are making and say something like: we don’t want carrots, we usually respond by saying they have to have a veggie still and they can pick which one. Granted that’s easy for us since our kids prefer raw over cooked veggies.