Do’s & Don’ts with Picky Eating This guide is intended for children 18 months and older. Do’s and Don’ts for Mealtime Happiness Be consistent with rules and boundaries. Setting and keeping consistent boundaries helps a child feel safe, even if they resist boundaries at first. Make mealtime fun. Bring silliness, joy, and fun to the table. Make it a place where the child wants to be. Eat together. Eating alone is boring, and many children want to be with their caregiver more than anything else. Eating together is also an excellent time for modeling healthy eating habits. Bring the child to the table hungry. Time meals so the child is hungry, calm, and organized. Outline a feeding schedule that allows about 90 minutes between meals and snacks. Avoid having meals right after milk or breastfeeds. Keep calm and confident. Do whatever you need to be in a calm, confident headspace for meals. Put on music, brew a cup of tea, light a candle. Come to the table calm, relaxed, and open-minded, but ready to reinforce boundaries if needed. Acknowledge that trying new foods can be scary. Trust that the child can try something new while acknowledging that it may require some bravery. Offer variety. Bring new, healthy foods to the table, every time, even if you don’t think the food will be eaten. Exposure matters and makes a difference in the long run. A child never has the chance to eat a food if it’s never served. Let the child play with their food. Play is a child’s way of learning and exploring the world. While it’s perfectly fine to set reasonable limits (e.g., no throwing food, breaking items, or being unsafe), we also want to encourage playing with food. The more a child interacts with food, the more likely they will eat it later. Quit using crutches to get a child to eat. While videos, phones, and other crutches can be helpful to start a child eating the meal, these crutches typically make picky eating worse in the long term. Feign indifference to food refusal. If the child refuses, tantrums, or acts out, keep your cool and stay neutral. Do not react to the child’s food refusal. Check your emotions if you feel triggered, as reacting will only worsen the situation. @SolidStarts | SolidStarts.com © Solid Starts Inc. 2022. All Rights Reserved. Do’s and Don’ts for Mealtime Happiness Never pressure a child to eat. The more a child feels pressure to eat, the less they will eat. Refrain from encouraging language like: “Try it; you’ll like it.” Never issue ultimatums, such as: “If you don’t eat this, there will be no shows tonight.” Don’t praise eating or tasting. Most children will experience this as pressure. Refrain from all forms of pressure, including positive pressure (e.g., “Good job for eating that!”) Never use food rewards. Avoid phrases like: “Eat your broccoli, and then you earn dessert.” Children experience this as pressure, and research shows that children tend to like the food even less if rewarded with a sweet treat for eating it. While it may result in a short-term win (broccoli is eaten that night), rewards can devastate long-term consequences. Don’t tell the child they won’t like it. Even if you think this is true, you almost guarantee it once it’s said. Further, don’t tell yourself, “They won’t eat that.” Remember: Believe you can both do hard things. Never ask a child to take one more bite. Doing so teaches the child to listen to you instead of their body for information on whether they are hungry. Never put food in a child’s mouth unless they invite you to do so. Placing food in someone’s mouth increases the likelihood of choking. It is also disrespectful and causes wavering trust at the table. Don’t change the feeding schedule if a meal is refused. Stick to the schedule you set. As hard as it can be, a necessary part of reversing picky eating is learning that skipped meals cause hungry bellies and full bellies happen when we eat. Avoid offering extra snacks. When kids are snacking a lot between meals, they are rarely hungry or motivated to eat. The child has almost no motivation to eat what’s served at a meal if food is constantly available. Don’t cater to the child’s food preferences. Kids like “kid foods” for a reason. Foods like dino nuggets, goldfish crackers and fruit snacks are designed to hit all the right flavor receptors and trigger maximum pleasure in the brain. Once a child knows these foods are readily available, they are more likely to refuse what’s served in hopes that the hyperpalatable foods are offered instead. Taste, not try. When discussing food, focus on food characteristics and the word “taste” rather than whether they like it or not. Tasting new food is exploratory and fun—discuss foods to help the child describe flavors and tastes while learning more about food. Discussing food helps a child know what to expect when they see that food again. @SolidStarts | SolidStarts.com © Solid Starts Inc. 2022. All Rights Reserved. Last updated: November 29, 2022 Terms and Conditions of Use: By using the website Solidstarts.com or a publication produced by Solid Starts Inc, you agree to the following terms and conditions of usage. If you do not agree to these terms, you should not use the website or any publication produced by Solid Starts Inc. The website Solidstarts.com (“the website”) and publications (“publications”) produced by Solid Starts Inc contain opinions and provide information, and the content, information, opinions, and suggestions on the website and the publications are offered for informational purposes only. 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