10 Tips For Getting Your Picky Little Eater to EAT.

10 Tips For Getting Your Picky Little Eater to EAT.

We have a two-year-old. Our beautiful boy who would once eat whatever he was served, has now discovered enough autonomy that he now has opinions about foods. It drives…. me….. INSANE. I don’t let him see it, but in my mind, I lose my s#%T.  I didn’t know what to do with the food he wouldn’t eat half of the time, because I didn’t know if he’d eat it later, and I didn’t want to waste foods….

Here we are now, three+ months into picky eating and I’m making some compromises for the sake of making sure he’s getting enough to eat. Here are my top ten tricks for getting my two-year-old to eat…

1. Add Condiments. Occasionally, he’ll eat something he doesn’t want if it has ranch dressing, but a. there’s no guarantee and b. its not nutritionally the best, but 80% of the time, he’ll eat foods that have ketchup on them (which is also not nutritionally where I want him to be)… BUT… if I can get him to eat green beans by putting ketchup on them, I’ll do it. With that said, I buy organic ketchup. Another option is to make your own, which is a quick process requiring only tomatoes, white vinegar, salt to taste (use sparingly for kids) and I use agave instead of white sugar. *Small children shouldn’t have honey
2. Strip down those foods. I remove crusts. Cole not only won’t eat crusts, he also won’t eat the skin of fruit. I don’t like it, because I was raised that “roughage is good” and “you eat what you’re served”. There was no picky eating allowed in our house growing up. I wasn’t a picky eater, but there were kids that went without until the got the gist. I’m not sacrificing my son’s nutrition to make a statement to him, not when he’s only two anyway. I remove the peel from his apples, his pears and I remove the crusts from his breads.
3. Feed them! I feed him. Everyone insists he needs to feed himself, and we let him do that, but there’s a turning point where he wants to get out of his high chair, but I can tell he’s still hungry. He’ll literally chuck his food if I try and leave him in there. We take his food, wipe down his hands and face and take away his spoon or spork, and then I let him come to me and I feed him. I’ve gotten into putting his food on my plate, and then he comes for bites. I may grow to regret allowing him eating off of my plate later, but today, it means I’m getting him to eat.
4. Take the Good with the Bad. I mix the foods he likes with the ones he doesn’t. Cole has an aversion to several green foods now. Foods I often time believe him to like. For instance, I know he enjoys green pepper. I will add it to his eggs, and he will give it a chance, because he loves eggs. It may mean he’s eating something in the am that the rest of us are getting in the pm, but in the grand scheme of things, all that matters is that he’s getting a balanced diet.
5. Buy Stuff. I buy stuff! That sounds pretty general, right? Those fruit pouches, whether Beechnut or GoGoSqueeze or Trader Joe’s brand, are something he enjoys. They cost more than buying or making applesauce, but he can serve them to himself and he will eat them 90% of the time I give them to him, so long as I buy the right flavors. You CAN make your own pouches, but I regularly forget to order the reusable ones I’ve seen on amazon. I pay too much for these, but I can get three or four additional fruits and veggies into him in a given day by buying these pouches.
6. Personal Chef. I cook meals specifically for him. I often times, especially at dinner, will struggle to find foods that he’s willing to eat, so I’ll make extra food for Alex and Myself to eat in case he wants to try it, and I’ll make something entirely different for Cole to eat, because I know its something he’ll eat. Its worth the effort to get nutrition into him.
7. Milk. I hear all too often that I give Cole too much milk. I probably do. He loves it. It not only is guaranteed he’ll consume it, it has the added benefit of having a calming affect on him. These are good things. At the end of the day, as long as he gets enough foods from each of his food groups, I really don’t stress if he’s getting 8oz more than what’s recommended. He’s been very healthy, and he’s in the 96th percentile for height and 75-80th percentile for weight, so I feel as though he’s doing alright.
8. Morning Free-For-All. I feed him breakfast in the living room. For Cole, we make sure he eats dinner in his highchair, and if I’m absent, Alex will feed him all of his meals in the highchair, but the five days-a-week where I’m the only adult there during breakfast, I put a plate on the TV stand, put some music on, and talk to him while he picks from his plate standing up or dancing or he’ll come sit in my lap. It isn’t a quick process, but he will eat his food. Its not ideal, it means more cleanup and I’m not certain of health issues that may be tied to eating while standing up, but he’s been great.
9. Sharing. I share foods with him. Cole knows that if I’m eating cereal, its for him too. It’s something I’ll have to un-teach him before he goes to nursery school, but for now, I enjoy it. If you have any conditions such as herpes, that can be spread through saliva, I would not recommend food-sharing, but neither Alex or myself happens to have anything, so we both tend to food share. Cole enjoys not only the eating but its a bonding thing too. He really enjoys the sharing aspect of it.
10. Jot down the particulars. I NOTE EVERYTHING… your child may do all or none of what I’ve discussed above, but I learned these likes and dislikes by taking note and trying different things. You will never, unless you are just totally amazing, remember everything your kid likes and dislikes and still remember all of the other cool stuff they’re doing. But if you’re like me, sleep deprived and maintaing more than one child, you may be forgetful, and need to write down stuff. I plug away, jotting it into the NOTES App on my phone, and have no guilt if I forget something, because I can just read up on it in my phone. Try different things, you CAN do this. Your child WILL eat!