17 Tips for Picky Eaters!
When our first few children were toddlers, we dreaded dinnertime. We
would prepare all kinds of sensible meals composed of what we thought were
healthy, appealing foods. Most of these offerings would end up splattering the
high-chair tray and carpeting the floor. To make matters worse, we took our
kids' rejection of our cuisine personally, sure that this was a sign of
parental lapse on our part. What was wrong? Why were these kids such picky
eaters?
Why toddlers are
picky. Being a picky eater is part of what it means to be a toddler. We
have since learned that there are developmental reasons why kids between one
and three years of age peck and poke at their food. After a year of rapid
growth (the average one-year-old has tripled her birth weight), toddlers gain
weight more slowly. So, of course, they need less food. The fact that these
little ones are always on the go also affects their eating patterns. They don't
sit still for anything, even food. Snacking their way through the day is more
compatible with these busy explorers' lifestyle than sitting down to a
full-fledged feast.
Learning this helped
us relax. We now realize that our job is simply to buy the right food,
prepare it nutritiously (steamed rather than boiled, baked rather than fried),
and serve it creatively. We leave the rest up to the kids. How much they eat,
when they eat, and if they eat is mostly their responsibility; we've learned to
take neither the credit nor the blame.
Toddlers like to
binge on one food at a time. They may eat only fruits one day, and
vegetables the next. Since erratic eating habits are as normal as toddler mood
swings, expect your child to eat well one day and eat practically nothing the
next. Toddlers from one to three years need between 1,000 and 1,300 calories a
day, yet they may not eat this amount every day. Aim for a
nutritionally-balanced week, not a balanced day.
All this is not to say that parents
shouldn't encourage their toddlers to eat well and develop healthy food habits.
Based on our hands-on experience with eight children, we've developed 17
tactics to tempt little taste buds and minimize mealtime hassles.
1. Offer a nibble tray. Toddlers like to graze their way through a
variety of foods, so why not offer them a customized smorgasbord? The first tip
from the Sears' kitchen is to offer toddlers a nibble tray. Use an ice-cube
tray, a muffin tin, or a compartmentalized dish, and put bite-size portions of
colorful and nutritious foods in each section. Call these finger foods playful
names that a two-year-old can appreciate, such as:
· apple moons (thinly sliced)
· avocado boats (a quarter of an avocado)
· banana wheels
· broccoli trees (steamed broccoli florets)
· carrot swords (cooked and thinly sliced)
· cheese building blocks
· egg canoes (hard- boiled egg wedges)
· little O's (o-shaped cereal)
Place
the food on an easy-to-reach table. As your toddler makes his rounds through
the house, he can stop, sit down, nibble a bit, and, when he's done, continue
on his way. These foods have a table-life of an hour or two.
NUTRITIP: Good
Grazing –– Good Behavior
A
child's demeanor often parallels her eating patterns. Parents often notice
that a toddler's behavior deteriorates toward the end of the morning or
mid-afternoon. Notice the connection? Behavior is at its worst the longer
they go without food. Grazing minimizes blood-sugar swings and lessens the
resulting undesirable behavior.
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2. Dip it. Young children think that immersing foods in
a tasty dip is pure fun (and delightfully messy). Some possibilities to dip
into:
· cottage cheese or tofu dip
· cream cheese
· fruit juice-sweetened preserves
· guacamole
· peanut butter, thinly spread
· pureed fruits or vegetables
· yogurt, plain or sweetened with juice
concentrate
Those
dips serve equally well as spreads on apple or pear slices, bell-pepper strips,
rice cakes, bagels, toast, or other nutritious platforms.
3. Spread it. Toddlers like spreading, or more
accurately, smearing. Show them how to use a table knife to spread cheese,
peanut butter, and fruit concentrate onto crackers, toast, or rice cakes.
4. Top it. Toddlers are into toppings. Putting
nutritious, familiar favorites on top of new and less-desirable foods is a way
to broaden the finicky toddler's menu. Favorite toppings are yogurt, cream
cheese, melted cheese, guacamole, tomato sauce, applesauce, and peanut butter.
5. Drink it. If your youngster would rather drink than
eat, don't despair. Make a smoothie –– together. Milk and fruit –– along with
supplements such as juice, egg powder, wheat germ, yogurt, honey, and peanut
butter –– can be the basis of very healthy meals. So what if they are consumed
through a straw? One note of caution: Avoid any drinks with raw eggs or you'll risk
salmonella poisoning.
6. Cut it up. How much a child will eat often depends on
how you cut it. Cut sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, and pizza into various
shapes using cookie cutters.
7. Package it. Appearance is important. For something
new and different, why not use your child's own toy plates for dishing out a
snack? Our kids enjoy the unexpected and fanciful when it comes to serving
dishes –– anything from plastic measuring cups to ice-cream cones.
You
can also try the scaled-down approach. Either serve pint-size portions or, when
they're available, buy munchkin-size foodstuffs, such as mini bagels, mini
quiches, chicken drummettes (the meat part of the wing), and tiny muffins.
8. Become a veggie vendor. I must have heard,
"Doctor, he won't eat his vegetables" a thousand times. Yet, the
child keeps right on growing. Vegetables require some creative marketing, as
they seem to be the most contested food in households with young children. How
much vegetables do toddlers need? Although kids should be offered three to five
servings of veggies a day, for children under five, each serving need be only a
tablespoon for each year of age. In other words, a two- year-old should ideally
consume two tablespoons of vegetables three to five times a day. So if you aren't
the proud parent of a veggie lover, try the following tricks:
· Plant a garden with
your child. Let her help care for the plants, harvest the ripe
vegetables, and wash and prepare them. She will probably be much more
interested in eating what she has helped to grow.
· Slip grated or diced
vegetables into favorite foods. Try adding them to rice, cottage cheese,
cream cheese, guacamole, or even macaroni and cheese. Zucchini pancakes are a
big hit at our house, as are carrot muffins.
· Camouflage vegetables
with a favorite sauce.
· Use vegetables as
finger foods and dip them in a favorite sauce or dip.
· Using a small cookie
cutter, cut the vegetables into interesting shapes.
· Steam your greens.
They are much more flavorful and usually sweeter than when raw.
· Make veggie art .
Create colorful faces with olive- slice eyes, tomato ears, mushroom noses,
bell-pepper mustaches, and any other playful features you can think of. Our
eighth child, Lauren, loved to put olives on the tip of each finger.
"Olive fingers" would then nibble this nutritious and nutrient-dense
food off her fingertips. Zucchini pancakes make a terrific face to which you
can add pea eyes, a carrot nose, and cheese hair.
· Concoct creative
camouflages. There are all kinds of possible variations on the old
standby "cheese in the trees" (cheese melted on steamed broccoli
florets). Or, you can all enjoy the pleasure of veggies topped with peanut-
butter sauce, a specialty of Asian cuisines.
9. Share it. If your child is going through a picky-eater
stage, invite over a friend who is the same age or slightly older whom you know
"likes to eat." Your child will catch on. Group feeding lets the
other kids set the example.
10. Respect tiny tummies. Keep food servings small.
Wondering how much to offer? Here's a rule of thumb –– or, rather, of hand. A
young child's stomach is approximately the size of his fist. So dole out small
portions at first and refill the plate when your child asks for more. This
less-is-more meal plan is not only more successful with picky eaters, it also
has the added benefit of stabilizing blood-sugar levels, which in turn
minimizes mood swings. As most parents know, a hungry kid is generally not a
happy kid.
Use
what we call "the bite rule" to encourage the reluctant eater:
"Take one bite, two bites……" (how ever far you think you can push it
without force-feeding). The bite rule at least gets your child to taste a new
food, while giving her some control over the feeding. As much as you possibly
can, let your child –– and his appetite –– set the pace for meals. But if you
want your child to eat dinner at the same time you do, try to time his
snack-meals so that they are at least two hours before dinner.
11. Make it accessible. Give your toddler shelf space.
Reserve a low shelf in the refrigerator for a variety of your toddler's
favorite (nutritious) foods and drinks. Whenever she wants a snack, open the
door for her and let her choose one. This tactic also enables children to eat
when they are hungry, an important step in acquiring a healthy attitude about
food.
12. Use sit-still strategies. One reason why toddlers
don't like to sit still at the family table is that their feet dangle. Try
sitting on a stool while eating. You naturally begin to squirm and want to get
up and move around. Children are likely to sit and eat longer at a child-size
table and chair where their feet touch the ground.
13. Turn meals upside down. The distinctions between
breakfast, lunch, and dinner have little meaning to a child. If your youngster
insists on eating pizza in the morning or fruit and cereal in the evening, go
with it –– better than her not eating at all. This is not to say that you
should become a short-order cook, filling lots of special requests, but why not
let your toddler set the menu sometimes? Other family members will probably
enjoy the novelty of waffles and hash browns for dinner.
14. Let them cook. Children are more likely to eat their
own creations, so, when appropriate, let your child help prepare the food. Use
cookie cutters to create edible designs out of foods like cheese, bread, thin
meat slices, or cooked lasagna noodles. Give your assistant such jobs as
tearing and washing lettuce, scrubbing potatoes, or stirring batter. Put
pancake batter in a squeeze bottle and let your child supervise as you squeeze
the batter onto the hot griddle in fun shapes, such as hearts, numbers,
letters, or even spell the child's name.
15. Make every calorie count. Offer your child foods
that pack lots of nutrition into small doses. This is particularly important
for toddlers who are often as active as rabbits, but who seem to eat like mice.
Nutrient-dense
foods that most children are willing to eat include:
· Avocados
· Pasta
· Broccoli
· Peanut butter
· Brown rice and other grains
· Potatoes
· Cheese
· Poultry
· Eggs
· Squash
· Fish
· Sweet potatoes
· Kidney beans
· Tofu
· Yogurt
16. Count on inconsistency. For young children, what and
how much they are willing to eat may vary daily. This capriciousness is due in
large part to their ambivalence about independence, and eating is an area where
they can act out this confusion. So don't be surprised if your child eats a
heaping plateful of food one day and practically nothing the next, adores
broccoli on Tuesday and refuses it on Thursday, wants to feed herself at one
meal and be totally catered to at another. As a parent in our practice said,
"The only thing consistent about toddler feeding is inconsistency."
Try to simply roll with these mood swings, and don't take them personally.
17. Relax. Sometime between her second and third
birthday, you can expect your child to become set in her ideas on just about
everything –– including the way food is prepared. Expect food fixations . If
the peanut butter must be on top of the jelly and you put the jelly on top of
the peanut butter, be prepared for a protest. It's not easy to reason with an
opinionated two-year-old. Better to learn to make the sandwich the child's way.
Don't interpret this as being stubborn. Toddlers have a mindset about the order
of things in their world. Any alternative is unacceptable. This is a passing
stage.
(For
more information see: ABC's
of Teaching Nutrition to Kids
GRAZING
We have
noticed that children's behavior often deteriorates in the late morning and
late afternoon, or three to four hours after a meal. Children simply run out of
fuel. When blood-sugar levels go down, stress hormones kick in to raise it up
again, but this can cause behavioral problems and diminished concentration. To
smooth out the blood-sugar mood swings, try the fine art of grazing. Let your
child nibble, or graze, on nutritious foods throughout the day. Make them
easily accessible in a lunch pack at school. (Smart teachers allow even
upper-grade children to have a mid-morning snack.) Carry snacks with you when
you are away from home. While at home, keep a supply of healthy snacks readily
available in the pantry or refrigerator.
Here's
a trick from the Sears' family kitchen for the preschool child. Prepare a
nibble tray. Use an ice cube tray, a muffin tin, or a compartmentalized plastic
dish and fill each section with bite-size portions of colorful and nutritious
foods. Give the foods fun names, such as avocado boats (a quarter of an avocado
sectioned lengthwise), banana or cooked carrot wheels, broccoli trees, cheese
blocks, little O's (O-shaped cereal), canoe eggs (hard-boiled eggs cut
lengthwise in wedges), moons (peeled apple slices, thinly spread with peanut
butter), or shells and worms (different shapes of pasta).
Don't forget that children love to dip. Reserve one or
two compartments in the tray for your child's favorite dips, such as yogurt or
guacamole (without the spices). Encourage the child to sit and nibble from the
tray frequently throughout the day, especially late in the morning and in the
mid-to-late afternoon, when the fuel from the previous meal begins to wear off.
Shorten the spacing between feedings and you are less likely to have spacey
children.
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