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Dealing with Picky Eaters

What can you do to make your picky eaters happy?

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Question: How do you deal with a picky eater? Are there any tactics you use on your kids so that you don't have to constantly make two meals- one for your picky eater and one for the rest of the family? What do you do if you have a picky eater and you're worried about them getting enough nutrition?

Claire Petrillo: When my daugther was little, she was an incredibly picky eater.  At one point, I had made a big pot of mashed potatos for her to have, because she was not eating anything else.  As she got older, I went back to work and I did not have the tolerance or time to keep making her special meals.  I gave her choices.  You can either have chicken and green beans, or you may have spaghetti.  Which one would you like?  Giving her a choice seemed to help while she was younger.  As she got older, I stopped with the choices, because there was not always an option for what to make that night for dinner, and I did not want a little kid running dinner.  I knew what she would eat and what she would not.  Her grandma kept telling me, "I never met a kid that starved themselves.  She'll eat when she is hungry."  This stuck with me for a long time.  And I tried not to worry so much when she refused something. 

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She was never underweight, so I kept reminding myself that she was getting enough.  In this day and age where childhood obseity is on the rise, I thought it was okay not to make her clean her plate; something I still abide by.  I never make her or my step-kids clean their plate.  They are told that if they do not eat enough, they don't get anything else.  My step-son is notirious for this.  A skinny little thing, he often says he is done after a few bites, then an hour later is starving.  I started keeping his dinner plate, and told him he can finish his dinner.  That seemed to work, because what he really wanted were snacky type foods.    All four of the kids like different things, and I try to present a variety.  For example, the oldest does not like spaghetti sauce, so I keep some spaghetti seperate for her.  I have one who likes to try new things, so she gets to sample more.

  A night recently, I made mac and cheese and I was informed that she no longer liked it.  I told her she was welcome to make herself a sandwhich instead, but this is what I was serving for dinner.  Instead of making herself a sandwhich, she ate the mac and cheese.  Surprise, surprise.  Unless they are underweight, I am not worrying about it.  They take a multi-vitamin, and I keep in mind that food is still an exploration for them right now, their taste buds are still developing and last I heard, no one ever didn't finish growing up because he didn't like carrots.

Julie Hickey: I have been through the picky eater stage - what parent hasn't? I used to pretty much give my kids whatever they wanted - within reason - for breakfast or lunch because what they wanted was easy enough to prepare. One of my daughters ate grilled cheese everyday for lunch for 3 years - no lie. I used to use microwave heating blocks to keep her grilled cheese hot while she was in school. My other daughter ate hot dogs for breakfast for months. Then there was the hot dog without a roll and baked beans stage.

 That went on for months as well. But breakfast and lunch were not battles I wanted to fight; it was pretty easy for me to make the same things days after day, so I didn't fight it. But when it came to dinner, I wanted everyone to eat the same thing. I read somewhere to put at least 3 different foods on their plates and have 2 of them be foods they liked. Then make them try the food they didn't like each and every time.  I read that it takes more than 2 or 3 trys to develop a taste for something. So that is what I used to do. Although my oldest only wanted grilled cheese for lunch, she usually whatever I gave her for dinner. 

To this day, it is hard to find something she doesn't like. My other daughter was different. We used to say she was a picky eater, but that really wasn't fair. Compare to what some other families were going through, she ate a very wide variety of foods. I wanted my children to like food and I wanted them to eat everything, so I always tried to vary my dinners and always tried new things. I would get the kids to try new things by withholding dessert if they didn't take at least 2 tastes of something. Since I had no problem giving out sugary sweets after dinner if they ate well and they loved dessert, this worked most of the time.

But like any threat, the kids have to know you are serious for it to work and I was. But I thought and still think it is important to eat a variety of foods, not just for nutritional reasons but for social reasons as well. I never worried about nutrition when they were eating grilled cheese and hot dogs every day. I tried to make up for it at dinnertime and I figured I was worrying about enough to let a particular stage get to me. I did give them vitamins for a while to make myself feel better. At the age of 12, I decided to stop forcing my daughter to eat seafood.

Lots of people don't like seafood, so why was I forcing her? So when I make seafood, I make her something else. Consequently, I don't prepare fish as much as the rest of us would like but it seems to be what we order when we are out.   For some children, I know that being a picky eater is a control issue.  And like all control issues, you need to teach the child who is really in charge. I used to explain to my children that there are things they can control and things they can't. That is just life.  I used to let them control lunch most of the time and I pointed that out to them. Dinner was not in their control but they were still expected to eat it or no dessert.

Vivian Merrill: Fortunately, my kids have not been overly picky eaters, at least compared to some of their friends they’ve had over. They go through phases, where a food they’ve liked for several years suddenly isn’t so good anymore. Then after a while, they go back to liking it again. The biggest sticking point is vegetables, and usually I will make a second vegetable that they like, and they still have to eat at least a tablespoon of the vegetable they claim not to like.

I asked a couple of people how they deal with this situation. One told me she will sometimes mask the unwanted food with a sauce or a cheese the kids like, but she will always have them try a bite of it, as if they want to be invited to other people’s homes, they should be prepared to try a variety of foods that they may not normally find at home.  Another person told me her parents allowed to her to make something else herself. Now that she’s on her own, she not only wishes someone would cook for her, and she regrets not having tried a wider variety of food when she was young.

Sometimes a recipe does not work as planned, and if I don’t like it, I won’t make the kids eat it if they don’t want to. Sometimes I’ll try a new food we’ve never had before just to see what it tastes like, and we’ll have something we know we like if it doesn’t work out. Thank God we have dogs.

Some foods are an acquired taste, and after a few tries, the kids will eat it. My aunt used to tell a story of one of her son’s friends that had never tried oatmeal, and he loved it, and ate it whenever he came over. One day, the friend’s mother told my aunt she hated oatmeal, as she was forced to eat it as child. She was horrified that her own son was asking her to make for him. I suspect that’s why I refuse to buy liver-I would be choking back tears of fury if I ever have to cook it.

 


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