9 Mealtime Strategies To Help Your Child With Picky Eating
Food neophobia, or the fear of new foods, can be a part of typical child development, which often starts around18 months to 2 years of age, and typically subsides by 6 years of age, and can contribute to picky eating. However, if left unchecked, it can snowball out of control. Following these mealtime strategies can help increase successful mealtimes and set your child up for success by providing a positive and supportive environment, structure, exposure to new foods, and reduced pressure.
Transition to the meal on a positive note.
Starting off with un upsetting transition can start the whole meal off on the wrong foot.
When children become acutely upset, their appetite decreases. By working on not only starting meals off on a positive note, but maintaining this throughout the meal, we set our children up for success.
Think about the transition from your child’s point of view.
Have they just gotten home after being in their carseat? They might not be as willing to transition right to their highchair or booster seat, and may do better with a 15 minute movement break. Is your child right in the middle of watching a favorite show? Try to plan any screen time so it hasn’t been turned on yet, or is able to finish, so they don’t feel as upset with a favorite show being turned off to go eat.
Give a verbal warning so your child knows what’s coming next.
Research has shown that giving a verbal warning before a transition increases compliance with the change in activity. For example:
“Dinner is in two minutes”
“A few more minutes to play then it’s time to eat”
Some children also respond well to an auditory and visual timer - “Alexa, set a timer for 2 minutes.”
Have the table and food as ready as possible before transitioning children to the table.
We can expect most children to sit for about 15-30 minutes for meals, but many children have difficulty even sitting for 5-10 minutes. If we get kids in their chairs before the food and table are ready, we may now have impatient and hungry children that might start melting down before the meal has even started. We want to avoid wasting any precious minutes that our children are able to stay seated at the table by not having the food ready yet.
Learn more tips for how to transition into meals on a positive note in my post, here.
2. Think about what food is being served, how the food is being served, and how much is being served.
Serving food family style has several benefits.
Aim to serve one protein, one carbohydrate, and one vegetable and/or fruit, and have at least one of the planned foods you serve be a preferred food for your child.
Consider appropriate portion sizes.
You can start with the rule of thumb of serving ¼-½ of an adult serving size, or a tablespoon per year of age (e.g. 3 years old = 3 TBS of each food) for preferred and tolerable foods you’re serving (i.e. foods your child typically and sometimes eats).
For new or non-preferred foods (i.e. foods your child has never seen or has only seen a couple of times, or foods your child consistently refuses to eat), serve an even smaller portion (think one piece of broccoli). By providing a small portion, it is less overwhelming for children, and they are more likely to consider eating it. When we provide a large portion of a new or non-preferred food, they can become overwhelmed with the amount they think they have to eat and shut down. It is important to continue serving these non-preferred foods, even when your child has rejected them in the past. It can take 10+ tastes on different occasions before a child starts to accept a food.
Check out this guide from a registered dietitian here.
Limit mealtime distractions.
Aim to eliminate the use of screens (TVs, iPads, phones), loud music, and even pets during mealtimes. Screens during mealtimes in particular can have long-term negative effects. All of these can take away from the child actually focusing on what they are doing. If a child only ever eats in front of a screen, their “cue to eating” is a screen, and they become less likely, or even unable to, eat when the screen is not there. Children are not focused on chewing their food, which can increase choking hazards, are not focused on the sensory properties of foods, which can keep their diet limited, and are less tuned into their hunger-full signals. Of course there will be times this rule may need to be broken (who doesn’t love family movie and pizza night?), but the key is to make the screen-time at mealtime an exception to the rule, rather than the routine.
Serve food family style when possible.
By giving children some sense of control for how much food goes on their plate, they can take the serving size they want so they do not become overwhelmed with too big of a serving size (as we previously discussed). This also gives children a chance to interact with the food (e.g. scooping, poking, touching), which is an important first step to eating a new food.
Research has found that infants and toddlers typically have an innate ability to know how much food they need for their individual needs in terms of energy, growth, and recent food intake. We can encourage children to listen to their body’s natural signals for when they’re full to help support a healthy relationship with food, rather than bribing children with dessert to eat more bites or finish what’s on their plate. This teaches them to ignore their body’s full signal, which can lead to over-eating.
That being said, if you are concerned with your child’s weight gain and growth, speak with your pediatrician and get a referral to a pediatric registered dietitian to get help specific to your child’s needs.
Serving foods family-style has benefits including:
Allows increased exposure to new foods. If your child is not quite ready to have a non-preferred food on their plate, at the very least they are able to see and smell it on the table.
Allows your child to easily get more of a food, whether that’s more of a preferred food, or more of a new food they tried and would like more of.
You can serve foods directly from the pots, pans, and bowls you cooked them in, or, place them straight into the containers you will use for any leftovers, which helps reduce extra dishes that need to be washed.
Try serving single foods before serving them as a mixed dish.
Children are more likely to eat single foods before eating a combined food dish (e.g. casserole dishes). Consider serving and exposing your child to foods separately (e.g. pasta, vegetables, ground meat, sauce to dip) before serving them as a combined dish (e.g. meat and vegetable lasagna).
3. Follow the Division of Responsibilities.
The Division of Responsibilities is a research-based approach by Ellyn Satter, which divides up the mealtimes responsibilities between parents and children.
The Division of Responsibilities is a research-based approach by Ellyn Satter, which divides up the responsibilities of mealtime between parents and children.
While we just learned that typically young children have an innate ability to determine how much food they need*, their responsibilities at mealtime are to determine how much they eat, and whether or not they eat (meaning we don’t force them to eat, whether physically forcing, emotionally forcing via bribes, or pressuring them to eat more food or non-preferred/new foods). It is the parent’s responsibility, however, to decide what to eat, where to eat, and when to eat.
What to eat:
This means the parent determines what foods are served, aiming to serve a balanced meal, with one protein, one carbohydrate, and one fruit and/or vegetable at each meal. It can be a tricky trap to ask your young child what they want to eat.
When given the opportunity to choose, of course a young child is always going to request their favorite food.
It’s easy to fall into this trap when we find our child not eating the foods we prepare. We do want to respect our child and set them up for success, so it is recommended to serve at least one preferred food at each meal, but it does not mean they get to choose what that preferred food is.
If you are already stuck in this trap and your child is used to choosing their meal, you can start by giving two firm choices to choose from (e.g. “Do you want chicken nuggets or mac and cheese?”). If they request something else, you can say something like, “Grilled cheese is not a choice tonight, do you want chicken nuggets or mac and cheese?” (even if you could make the requested food, it’s better to stick to the two given choices). This gives them some control, without being completely in control. It can take some time to adjust to this change, but stay strong, it will be worth it in the long run. Over time, this can be faded to them choosing one of the side dishes (e.g. “Do you want green beans or corn?”), and eventually fading this out all together.
This also means that you do not want to fall into the trap of being a short-order chef. Your child will quickly learn that if they refuse the foods they are served and you offer to make them something else, they can always refuse to eat and they will get what they want. If we always serve at least one preferred food, if our child chooses not to eat the foods, that is their choice. By sticking to a feeding schedule (see When to eat), we can rest assured that our child will be offered food again in 2.5 hours. Try a different preferred food at the next eating opportunity.
If your child is holding out, meal after meal, and not eating (especially if it persists beyond a day), and you are offering a preferred food at each meal, speak with your pediatrician.
When to eat:
This means we provide meals at regular 2.5-3 hour intervals, rather than providing snacks throughout the day for grazing. Grazing reduces the chance that your child will eat at meals and planned snack times. By providing consistent meals/snacks every few hours, your child’s body will learn to better listen to natural hunger-full signals.
Where to eat:
This means we provide a calm, positive, and supportive environment for our child to eat in. By providing supportive seating, including making sure our child’s stomach is meeting the table at the right height (between breast bone and belly button), and providing foot support, we are setting up our child’s body for successful eating, and increasing their chances of staying seated at the table long enough to finish eating.
4. Talk about the food.
Describing foods with descriptive words like crunchy, smooth, white, green, juicy, and chewy can help children learn to relate new foods to foods they are familiar with, and start to predict and understand how the food might feel in their mouth, making it less scary and unfamiliar.
It can be our natural inclination to describe foods as “good,” “bad,” “yummy,” and “yucky.” Unfortunately when we use words like this to describe foods to our children, we’re not providing very good information to help encourage them to try new foods. These words are subjective words, and your child may have already learned that something mommy or daddy says is “good” or “yummy” is not something your child thinks is “good” and “yummy.”
Describe the sensory properties of the food.
Instead of using subjective words like “good” and “bad,” use descriptive words to describe the sensory properties of the food (color, texture, shape, temperature, taste). This helps children start to understand the food, make it more familiar and less scary, predict what it might feel like in their mouth, and relate it to foods they are familiar with.
You can use words like: crunchy, soft, chewy, salty, sweet, juicy, smooth, stick shaped, circle, round, bumpy, smooth, warm, cold… etc!
You can then compare the food to a food they know and/or like with the same sensory property .
For example, “This asparagus is a green crunchy stick, your green veggie straws are green crunchy sticks, too!” or, “These mashed potatoes are smooth, like your yogurt, but they’re salty!” This helps them relate the food to foods they know, making them more likely to think about trying it.
Remember that children are absorbing everything around them. If we model, “Ew yucky,” or display our dislike of foods in front of our children, they are likely to mimic this behavior. Just because you do not like a food, does not mean your child won’t like it! You can say something like, “Daddy is still learning to like peas,” or, “Peas are round and green!”
Avoid asking, “Do you like it?”
This sets children up to say, “no,” categorize it as a food they do not like, and shut down from trying it again. As we know, children need to taste a food many many times before they know if they like it or not, so they can’t really answer this question accurately anyways.
If your child does respond with, “yuck,” or, “I don’t like it,” after tasting something, you can say something like, “I like how you tasted it!” or, “Our tastebuds need to taste a food a lot of times before they know if they like it, you’re still learning about squash, just like you’re learning to write your letters!” or, “Our tastebuds can change, you might like it next time.”
But don’t make talking about food the only topic of discussion.
This can make children, and especially picky eaters, feel like the spotlight is on them, and less likely to try something new. You can casually describe the food at the start of the meal or as you’re eating it, and give some gentle verbal praise for any interactions you do see your child doing with the food (if your child responds positively to verbal praise). Use this time to also talk about your day, or something fun that is happening tomorrow or this weekend.
5. Reduce the pressure to eat.
Increasing pressure often decreases the amount a child will eat, while decreasing pressure typically increases the amount a child will eat in the long-run.
This is one of the most important strategies when it comes to increasing children’s eating in the long-term.
While there are other pressure-filled strategies that may have quicker effects in the short-term (e.g. bribing), these typically have negative long-term effects. As we just discussed, young children typically have an innate ability to eat the amount their body currently needs*. It can be our natural instinct to pressure children to eat more when they’re not eating much, but by trusting our children’s natural instinct to know how much food they need at any given time (which can vary greatly depending on a variety of factor), we can reduce the pressure we place on children to eat more, which actually results in them… eating more!
Reducing pressure actually has the effect of encouraging children to try new foods more willingly.
When children feel like the spotlight is on them, they are less likely to try something new. When we tell a child to eat a food, or ask something like, “Can’t you just try it?” we set our child up again to say, “no,” and seek control of the situation by refusing to try it. Think about a food you don’t like. Would someone insisting you take a bite, holding it up near your face, or worse, touching it to your mouth, make you want to eat it? It’s gonna be a no from me.
Instead, research has shown we can:
Describe the foods (as we discussed above) to help encourage children to take a bite without being asked, by providing them information about the food.
Provide opportunities to eat new foods by continuing to place a small portion of new foods on their plate.
Model eating foods and healthy eating practices, and eat together with your child.
Provide verbal praise for all interaction with foods, if your child responds well to verbal praise (e.g. “I like how you are chewing your chicken,” “Thank you for serving mommy more zucchini, that was so helpful of you,” and, “Nice work giving a lick to the sweet potatoes”).
6. Incorporate family mealtimes and eat the same foods at the same time as your child.
Eating at the same time as your child, and especially as a family, has many benefits, both for physical and mental health.
Eating as a family has multiple benefits for your child, both for physical and mental health. When eating as a family (or at least one parent with the child), children are exposed to an increased variety of foods, and they see people they know and love enjoying these foods.
They see how others are eating new foods, which helps them learn how to eat new foods.
For example, if you serve a child corn on the cob that has never seen anyone eat it before, they may have difficulty figuring out how to even attempt eating it. If they are served the corn on the cob while their family is eating it, they can learn by watching their family members, and their family members can also teach them in the moment.
Eating is part of socialization and culture.
Think about celebrations, holidays, and social events. Most revolve around food, or at the very least, incorporate food. It is important for children to be involved in this, as well as be used to eating in a group of people.
For many children with picky eating and/or a feeding disorder, big events that revolve around food can be stressful, so it’s important to be tuned into how your child is feeling. The increase in activity, people, and new foods and smells can be overwhelming, so these situations may be especially difficult for your child, and we may need to lower our expectations in these circumstances.
Studies have even shown that children learn to enjoy foods that humans have an innately aversive response to, such as spicy chilis, in part due to the social element involved in enjoying these foods. Children miss out on these opportunities when they are eating alone, in front of a screen, or consistently being served and eating foods that differ from the rest of the family.
Stay engaged with your child during meals.
Stay present with your child during mealtimes by describing the food, talking to them about their day, praising them for all interactions with their food, and bonding as a family.
Make it a point to schedule family mealtimes.
In this day and age, it can be really tricky to find a time to incorporate family mealtimes. Start by finding at least one time a week where you can sit down as a family and eat the same foods as each other. This may start as breakfast or brunch on the weekends. Add on more family mealtimes as your schedule allows, or pre-schedule family dinners each month, and go from there. Making the effort will be worth it.
If you are not able to sit down with your child for many meals due to your schedule, ask your caregiver to stay engaged and eat lunch/dinner with your child.
Serve the same foods to the whole family.
This helps your child learn to accept the foods that are offered, that meals are a shared-food time, and decreases the idea of “my foods” versus “mommy and daddy foods.” As previously discussed, incorporate one of your child’s preferred foods into the foods served at family mealtime, and avoid letting your child dictate what foods are being served by only serving what they request, or making them something different if they refuse what is offered (even, and especially, if something preferred is already offered).
7. Stick to a feeding schedule.
Sticking to a feeding schedule and eliminating grazing is an important step towards successful meals.
Sticking to a feeding schedule is another important step to successful mealtimes.
When children snack, or “graze,” all day, they are not developing a natural hunger-full cycle.
When children are snacking, they are just taking the edge off of their hunger. If they’ve been snacking between meals, when they get to a mealtime and aren’t eating, they likely aren’t that hungry (I’m talking to you, Cheerios and Goldfish).
This doesn’t mean your child can’t have snacks, it just means the snacks can be planned, rather than constantly eating a little bit throughout the day.
Aim to stick to a schedule with your child eating every 2.5-3 hours (from the start of the eating time, to the next start of the next eating time), with 3 meals and 2 snacks.
Meals should last 15-30 minutes, while snacks can last 10-15 minutes. Try to serve only water between these planned eating times. Milk and juice can be filling, too.
Here’s an example of a feeding schedule:
Breakfast: 7:30am
Morning snack: 10:00am
Lunch: 12:30pm
Afternoon snack: 3:30pm
Dinner: 6:30pm
Rather than feeling like you have to follow a strict time schedule, the idea is sticking to eating every 2.5-3 hours, rather than the specific times. This leaves more flexibility if your child wakes up later/earlier one day, or something else interferes with the “schedule.”
Children typically eat less calories when they snack all day.
Although you may feel concerned that your child doesn’t eat at meals, and at least they eat snacks, children actually eat up to 50% less calories when they graze all day. They are likely eating less at meals because they are eating snacks all day. Instead, serve one of their preferred snack foods at a planned snack, or even as part of their meal.
Serving well balanced meals and snacks provide more opportunities for nutrient dense food, rather than “snack foods” which are often empty calories.
Try to serve one protein, one carbohydrate, and one fruit and/or vegetable at each meal and snack. Snacks should just be a smaller portion than meals, or can include just two of the food groups.
Try not to serve the same foods to your child more frequently than every other day. This helps avoid your child getting stuck in a “food-jag” where they eat the same thing every day. Often when we eat the same food every day we can become sick of the food and no longer want to eat it. Most adults can think of a food they ate too much of that they didn’t want to eat again for a long time. If your child is stuck in a food jag, or does not have enough foods they eat in their accepted food repertoire to ensure proper nutrition, try varying the food slightly each day. For example, if your child’s only accepted fruit is apples, serve apple cut in slices, diced, sticks, different variety of apples, boiled apples with cinnamon, etc. Serve the food only one time per day (if possible), and use the other meals as opportunities to present non-preferred foods.
8. Involve your child in the mealtime process.
Cooking with your children gives them opportunities to interact with new foods, which can help them eat it in the future.
Cooking with your child is a fantastic way to get them to interact with new foods.
When children interact with new foods, they gain an exposure with the food. The more a child is exposed to a food, the more likely they are to eventually eat it. They are also exposed to the sensory properties of the food by interacting with it, which helps them prepare their sensory system for how it might feel in their mouth. Interactions with the food include touching, smelling, cutting, stirring, pouring, and mashing.
Cooking also presents the opportunity for low-pressure interactions with the food.
Since the child is not expected to eat the food, this low-pressure environment may actually result in them tasting a new food.
Children are also more likely to try a new food that they helped prepare, they may not yet, but it increases the chances!
Give your child a job at mealtime.
You can also give your child a job, such as putting forks or napkins on the table, placing the rolls into a basket, or choosing their plate or cup (give 2 choices). This helps them feel involved and a sense of responsibility. This can also be a great transitional activity to help transition to mealtime in a positive way.
9. Let kids play with their food.
Playing with food provides positive sensory interactions with the food, which helps children work towards eventually eating it.
That’s right, despite what our parents told us, playing with food can actually have positive effects. As mentioned early, exposure and interactions with food all help increase the chance of your child trying a new food. These experiences add up and are cumulative over time.
Save the last few minutes of a meal to encourage interaction with any untouched foods.
You can use the last few minutes of a meal to interact and play with the new and non-preferred foods on your child’s plate. Playing with food is fun and intrinsically rewarding. The act of play helps reduce stress and creates a positive experience with the food.
First describe the food (e.g. “Look the broccoli looks like a tiny tree! It’s green and has a crunchy part and a soft part”).
Then give suggestions and model how to interact with it. For example, “Look you can poke it with your fork like me! I’m going to smell it, I wonder if it smells like a tree, too. The broccoli tickled my nose! You can try to tickle it on your nose, too.”
Avoid telling your child to do something, or asking them, “Can you…?” this sets them up to say, “no!” By saying, “You can…” it’s empowering them to do it, rather than asking or telling them to do something.
You can pretend the food is a car and drive it around the plate, make a silly nose or eyebrows, pretend to put on lipstick, or pretend to brush your teeth with the food!
You can see that children are more comfortable with a food (and closer to tasting or eating it) the closer they are willing to get it to their mouth, and are less comfortable with a food the further away they keep it from their mouth, or even from touching their hands. If a food does not feel safe on their hands, it’s most likely not a food they will feel safe putting in their mouths.
Have them interact with the food during clean-up time.
One great strategy I use in feeding therapy is to have them pick up one piece of each food from their plate and throw it into the trashcan to clean up. You can also see if they might place it in their mouth and “blow” or spit it out into the trash can. You can first model it and then tell them, “You can do it too!” When kids know they don’t have to eat it and it’s going into the trash, they’re much more likely to place it in their mouth and actually get a taste! Resist the urge to ask them to do another one, so they build trust that they just have to do it one time. If they independently do another one without you asking, great! If they don’t want to, don’t force them, and give them an alternative option (e.g. “Look you can put it on your nose or throw it in with your hand like a basketball”). As a last resort you can give them the option of using a fork or a napkin to pick it up
Pick a different time, outside of a mealtime, such as a snack or specific “food adventure” time, to work on more sensory exploration with foods.
Doing food sensory exploration during a snack or other time can help reduce the pressure to eat even further, which as we’ve learned, can actually increase children’s willingness to try something new.
Remember, change takes time.
All of these strategies take time, effort, and patience. It is not necessarily realistic to start using them all at once. Slowly start incorporating the strategies one by one into your family’s mealtime routines. New routines take time to adjust to, so be patient and stick with it, and look for small improvements. While the end goal may be for your child to try and eat new foods, remember that success also looks like: your child sitting at the table for one more minute, your child having a positive meal experience even if they don’t eat a new food, your child tolerating a new food on the table or on their plate, eating at the same time as someone else, eating without a screen, touching or licking a new food, or making it between a planned meal and a planned snack with no grazing. Start implementing these strategies one by one, and you’ll be on your way to more successful mealtimes!
*If you are concerned with your child’s weight gain and growth, speak with your pediatrician and get a referral to a pediatric registered dietitian to get help specific to your child’s needs. There may be other underlying issues contributing to your child’s picky eating. If you are concerned with your child’s feeding and picky eating, speak to your pediatrician and ask for a referral to a feeding therapist (feeding therapists have the title of speech-language pathologist or occupational therapist). Signs your child may benefit from feeding therapy include gagging, vomiting, and/or coughing while eating/drinking, difficulty chewing, rejection of foods, less than 20-30 accepted foods, little to no foods they will eat in certain food groups (e.g. proteins, fruits, vegetables), consistently needing a different meal than the rest of the family, and/or tantrums at the sight or presentation of new or non-preferred foods at the table or on their plate. In some cases, your pediatrician or feeding therapist may also refer you to a gastroenterologist (GI doctor), allergist, otolaryngologist (ENT doctor), or other member of a feeding team.
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This website and information on this blog post is provided for educational purposes only. It is not meant as medical advice, intended to replace a speech-language or feeding assessment, therapy from a speech-language pathologist, or serve as medical or nutritional care for a child. It is recommended that you discuss any concerns or questions you might have with your Speech-Language Pathologist, pediatrician, and medical team, and develop an individualized team plan specifically for your child.