Help with my picky eaters!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP the best food advice I've ever read has come from Ellyn Satter. I would highly recommend picking up a book by her and really following it.

Everything she does is based on the division of responsibility. You decide what to serve & when, and your child decides IF and how much to eat. Her approach includes ensuring there is a plain carb on the table plus milk so that kids can manage if they don't want to try anything else.

The key is just dropping the rope, and not commenting on their food choices. That means no coaxing, as well as no praise. It needs to be neutral.

I follow her advice pretty closely, including serving a small portion of dessert with dinner and not having any negotiations at all around whether they get it. It's a small portion so they can't fill up on it. One of my sons always eats it first, and the other saves it until the end.

One of the main reasons I recommend her is that dinner has never been a battle in our house. The kids don't feel anxious about what's being served, or shamed when they won't try it. There is no arguing, arm twisting, negotiation etc.

Disclaimer: this doesn't work for 100% of children, especially if there are special needs. But from the way your describe your situation, and how lunch has already improved, it sounds like normal childhood pickiness here.

This is OP. Thank you! I have read her book and that's the approach we started with when my oldest was a toddler. We stuck with it for awhile, but what do you do when your kid almost ALWAYS eats only bread and NEVER tries the fruits or vegetables or foods outside their comfort zone? Like, never. My oldest is better and I almost never say anything about what he eats. But even he never eats the fruits or vegetables on offer at dinner and still won't touch anything with ground beef in it. Or when we have breakfast for dinner they have nothing but pancakes and don't touch the sausage, fruit, or eggs. Do at some point you say no more pancakes until you eat the rest of your food?

It sounds like both of your kids like applesauce. That’s fruit. Moreover, it’s cheap and stores well. I would just always have some applesauce available and if they didn’t like whatever fruit we were having, then they are free to get up and make themselves a bowl of applesauce.
I don’t know if there is a vegetable that your kids like, but I would do the same thing there. If you don’t want beans, then you can get yourself some baby carrots or whatever.

[Anonymous]

While I do think some picky eating may be a symptom of a bigger issue giving kids nuggets, Mac n cheese etc as toddlers sets them up to fail and not want Normal healthier food. OP cut the snacks to twice a day and make sure they’re healthy. Cookies, candy, fruit snacks etc should be a dessert not a snack. Doing a dessert after dinner but requiring a certain amount eaten is good. I did the same thing. My kids have time at their age in bites ( of the main meal) to get dessert. There’s no arguing, it’s the same thing every night. If a kid can eat a nugget he can eat a pork chop.

[Anonymous]

OP _ I think you are on the right track but I wouldn't do the one bite in exchange for dessert thing - it's causing a fight for one hershey kiss?

Let the kids eat what they want, have applesauce at every meal and just keep doing the rest - over time it will improve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi op, it sounds like you are on track in many ways, have you considered kids way in color better bites program? I think it goes into more detail to answer some of these more specific questions that can be tough to navigate (like how to be considerate without catering, and how to get beyond just offering for a kid who will just never try something like you describe without pressuring). For example for the considerate not catering I think what you’re doing sounds exactly like what I’ve read, making sure there is always a safe food but usually you want to not always offer the same safe food but that is hard when it gets to the point you’re at so I think additional help would really help. And then she also helps with strategies to increase exposure beyond the just offering I think.

This is OP I will look into this thank you!

[Anonymous]

Well, you know the issue; you stated it yourself. First, boxed mac and cheese has no place in any diet. Second, what is this Hershey kisses thing, and why is there any kind of chocolate involved in a dessert at dinner? It sounds like it is a t every dinner.

Now, I am not going to say it is easy nor that I am perfect, as my kids did not eat, but they have severe illnesses due to illnesses. I served what they ate a lot.
Yet, I served pasta with butter, chicken that I breaded and cooked, and not some nuggets. Stews and beans and similar things were made bland for one with severe reflux and acid burning her throat since birth. And a side of pasta with butter/or nothing, if she wanted.

I don't know who this Ellyn Slater is, nor do I care. After you evaluate your kids with doctors and determine no health issues are causing this, you should start making all the food yourself. Do they want potatoes? You fry them or put them in the oven; They want chicken, you bread it and cook it.
It should work for your kids if it worked with my two FTT kids due to health issues. It worked as by age 14, they started eating everything, preferred homemade meals, and couldn't stand fast and frozen foods. Make homemade soups. The canned stuff is nasty. Make crepes or apple pie for dessert; at least there is milk, apples, or some other fruit. We used to get dessert once or twice a month when I was growing up. Give them toast with butter or even lard, the farm-made one full of Vitamin D.

My grandma, my mom, my aunts, and all my cousins (we are in our 50s now) and I did this. We have severe gastro issues in our extended family, as in we puke everything we eat, reflux, kidney issues, and food allergies. We are cursed with the worst genetics regarding food allergies and gastric issues. Give it a try, it is not easy, it takes so much time, and you need to now how to cook, which you might already know, but veggies? Just steam them, keep at it like feeding your kids is an Olympic sport and you keep failing every day. I sure felt like a failure all the time with food. And then it paid off.
And never, ever, never, ever, I can't emphasize this too much, force your kids to eat, make a fuss all time about it. I did that too, and it failed every time. Once I took a deep breath and stopped all that, it started to work; they started to eat. Plain rice and mince, plain chicken and rice or pasta, that I cooked, then slowly, slowly more spices, more variety.
Good luck, it is a marathon and the first thing is to stop worrying unless there is a health issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP the best food advice I've ever read has come from Ellyn Satter. I would highly recommend picking up a book by her and really following it.

Everything she does is based on the division of responsibility. You decide what to serve & when, and your child decides IF and how much to eat. Her approach includes ensuring there is a plain carb on the table plus milk so that kids can manage if they don't want to try anything else.

The key is just dropping the rope, and not commenting on their food choices. That means no coaxing, as well as no praise. It needs to be neutral.

I follow her advice pretty closely, including serving a small portion of dessert with dinner and not having any negotiations at all around whether they get it. It's a small portion so they can't fill up on it. One of my sons always eats it first, and the other saves it until the end.

One of the main reasons I recommend her is that dinner has never been a battle in our house. The kids don't feel anxious about what's being served, or shamed when they won't try it. There is no arguing, arm twisting, negotiation etc.

Disclaimer: this doesn't work for 100% of children, especially if there are special needs. But from the way your describe your situation, and how lunch has already improved, it sounds like normal childhood pickiness here.

This is OP. Thank you! I have read her book and that's the approach we started with when my oldest was a toddler. We stuck with it for awhile, but what do you do when your kid almost ALWAYS eats only bread and NEVER tries the fruits or vegetables or foods outside their comfort zone? Like, never. My oldest is better and I almost never say anything about what he eats. But even he never eats the fruits or vegetables on offer at dinner and still won't touch anything with ground beef in it. Or when we have breakfast for dinner they have nothing but pancakes and don't touch the sausage, fruit, or eggs. Do at some point you say no more pancakes until you eat the rest of your food?

They are young op, give it some time. Keep serving, I mean they do eat fruits and veg in their comfort zone; give your little one chicken, boil eggs, make porridge; they will start eating it if you just leave it there and don't say a word.

[Anonymous]

Just want to weigh in that some kids do grow out of it.

I am a "try two bites of everything to be polite" mom myself, but I was a picky eater as a young child and now will eat everything. When my dad started getting into cooking when I was 9-10, I started branching out a lot. Turns out I wasn't picky -- I was a snob! The things I didn't like were bologna, American cheese, white bread...etc.

[Anonymous]

The kidney bean/potato example from earlier is a very clear evidence that some (maybe a lot) of picky eating is anxiety, not actual palate/taste issues. And no therapist would recommend just avoiding the anxiety for the rest of your life. Exposing someone to the feared item in small ways helps them gain confidence in themselves. Always serve the food you hope your kids will eventually eat. Don't do the whole "oh I don't put it on his plate because he hates peppers" thing. Don't require him to eat it, but yes put it there! This is what our family is eating. My kids went through a picky stage but I refused to be a hot dog and Mac and cheese only mom, so I fought through it, (and yes yes I know some kids lose weight and that's scary, but I'm guessing that most kids aren't that picky--just average picky) and I don't think parents should just give up and send goldfish to school every day because their kid refuses to put a carrot in their mouth. Send 3 baby carrots too. They need to be desensitized.

[Anonymous]

Ellyn Satter didn’t work for my now 11 year old. She was perfectly content to eat bread for dinner and hold out for breakfast. She tried nothing new and nothing changed.

When she was maybe 7 or 8 and we hadn’t seen much improvement, we went back to her needing to try a bite of things. For things she didn’t love but tolerated (an example would be grilled chicken) we would give her 5-6 small bites and say she needed to have them all.

I would still call her a picky eater but it’s so much better now. I actually credit my sister in law because her same aged son was also super picky (maybe even more than my DD) and she was very old school about it. He now eats way better than my daughter.

I know I’ll get flamed, but just another side to share.

[Anonymous]

Stop the nuggets and Mac and cheese.

Think about the heathy foods they like that aren’t just bread.

Yogurt, fruits, vegetables, peanut butter sandwich, milk, cheese? If they want to eat some combination of those for every meal- fine.

I have a 5 yr old that is picky and often doesn’t eat what I cook for dinner. I won’t cook her something separate. But if she wants to eat a square of cheese, 2 bananas and a glass of milk for dinner, fine. And she often does.

If we are having dessert, I do similar to you and tell her she has to eat a couple bites of whatever I cooked. She generally does with minimal arguing. So I roll with it since it gets her to try things. But this isn’t every night and if it was a big argument are causing tension I wouldn’t do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, you know the issue; you stated it yourself. First, boxed mac and cheese has no place in any diet. Second, what is this Hershey kisses thing, and why is there any kind of chocolate involved in a dessert at dinner? It sounds like it is a t every dinner.

Now, I am not going to say it is easy nor that I am perfect, as my kids did not eat, but they have severe illnesses due to illnesses. I served what they ate a lot.
Yet, I served pasta with butter, chicken that I breaded and cooked, and not some nuggets. Stews and beans and similar things were made bland for one with severe reflux and acid burning her throat since birth. And a side of pasta with butter/or nothing, if she wanted.

I don't know who this Ellyn Slater is, nor do I care. After you evaluate your kids with doctors and determine no health issues are causing this, you should start making all the food yourself. Do they want potatoes? You fry them or put them in the oven; They want chicken, you bread it and cook it.
It should work for your kids if it worked with my two FTT kids due to health issues. It worked as by age 14, they started eating everything, preferred homemade meals, and couldn't stand fast and frozen foods. Make homemade soups. The canned stuff is nasty. Make crepes or apple pie for dessert; at least there is milk, apples, or some other fruit. We used to get dessert once or twice a month when I was growing up. Give them toast with butter or even lard, the farm-made one full of Vitamin D.

My grandma, my mom, my aunts, and all my cousins (we are in our 50s now) and I did this. We have severe gastro issues in our extended family, as in we puke everything we eat, reflux, kidney issues, and food allergies. We are cursed with the worst genetics regarding food allergies and gastric issues. Give it a try, it is not easy, it takes so much time, and you need to now how to cook, which you might already know, but veggies? Just steam them, keep at it like feeding your kids is an Olympic sport and you keep failing every day. I sure felt like a failure all the time with food. And then it paid off.
And never, ever, never, ever, I can't emphasize this too much, force your kids to eat, make a fuss all time about it. I did that too, and it failed every time. Once I took a deep breath and stopped all that, it started to work; they started to eat. Plain rice and mince, plain chicken and rice or pasta, that I cooked, then slowly, slowly more spices, more variety.
Good luck, it is a marathon and the first thing is to stop worrying unless there is a health issue.

This kind of made me laugh. I am with you though. I don’t think this applies to the OP, but most people I know IRL who complain that their kids are picky eaters are actually just terrible cooks. I wouldn’t eat half of what they serve their families either.

[Anonymous]

OP, as you can tell different strategies work for different kids, so it's good to experiment which it sounds like you're doing.

In our case--we have an 11yo very picky eater who has been picky since the day we introduced solid foods when she was 6 months old. We went through a long phase where dinner was a battle. We also had a brief time when she was younger where she became very underweight and we had to address that. Now I would say we do "cater" though I don't really think of it that way. I think of it as acknowledging that as an adult pp picky eater said, picky eating is not usually a choice and many picky eaters wish they weren't picky. This is true for my kid who tries many foods and just doesn't like them. We do encourage trying a single bite just to see (but don't force) and beyond that we don't worry about it. She gets a separate dinner or an adapted dinner, like pasta the rest of us are having but with butter and no sauce. We do not tie eating dinner to dessert. We let her eat when she is hungry, and sometimes she eats a lot after school and less at dinner. She eats a lot of fruit, and in general isn't eating junk food. We don't comment on what she eats or doesn't eat.

This has worked out well for us and significantly decreased everyone's stress, she is growing fine and seems healthy and well-adjusted, so I don't worry. In the last year or two her palate has expanded a bit. My other kid is the polar opposite and eats almost anything. Interestingly, for the most part these kids have tracked almost exactly the same for height and weight by age (except for the stretch when my picky kid had weight issues), which suggests to me that a lot of growth is genetics, not what they are eating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, as you can tell different strategies work for different kids, so it's good to experiment which it sounds like you're doing.

In our case--we have an 11yo very picky eater who has been picky since the day we introduced solid foods when she was 6 months old. We went through a long phase where dinner was a battle. We also had a brief time when she was younger where she became very underweight and we had to address that. Now I would say we do "cater" though I don't really think of it that way. I think of it as acknowledging that as an adult pp picky eater said, picky eating is not usually a choice and many picky eaters wish they weren't picky. This is true for my kid who tries many foods and just doesn't like them. We do encourage trying a single bite just to see (but don't force) and beyond that we don't worry about it. She gets a separate dinner or an adapted dinner, like pasta the rest of us are having but with butter and no sauce. We do not tie eating dinner to dessert. We let her eat when she is hungry, and sometimes she eats a lot after school and less at dinner. She eats a lot of fruit, and in general isn't eating junk food. We don't comment on what she eats or doesn't eat.

This has worked out well for us and significantly decreased everyone's stress, she is growing fine and seems healthy and well-adjusted, so I don't worry. In the last year or two her palate has expanded a bit. My other kid is the polar opposite and eats almost anything. Interestingly, for the most part these kids have tracked almost exactly the same for height and weight by age (except for the stretch when my picky kid had weight issues), which suggests to me that a lot of growth is genetics, not what they are eating.

this approach is good if you have healthy food in the house and your kid eats fruit and veggies. It won’t work if you give the kid nuggets, Mac n cheese, hot dogs etc and they never eat fruit or vegetables except for the occasional pouch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, as you can tell different strategies work for different kids, so it's good to experiment which it sounds like you're doing.

In our case--we have an 11yo very picky eater who has been picky since the day we introduced solid foods when she was 6 months old. We went through a long phase where dinner was a battle. We also had a brief time when she was younger where she became very underweight and we had to address that. Now I would say we do "cater" though I don't really think of it that way. I think of it as acknowledging that as an adult pp picky eater said, picky eating is not usually a choice and many picky eaters wish they weren't picky. This is true for my kid who tries many foods and just doesn't like them. We do encourage trying a single bite just to see (but don't force) and beyond that we don't worry about it. She gets a separate dinner or an adapted dinner, like pasta the rest of us are having but with butter and no sauce. We do not tie eating dinner to dessert. We let her eat when she is hungry, and sometimes she eats a lot after school and less at dinner. She eats a lot of fruit, and in general isn't eating junk food. We don't comment on what she eats or doesn't eat.

This has worked out well for us and significantly decreased everyone's stress, she is growing fine and seems healthy and well-adjusted, so I don't worry. In the last year or two her palate has expanded a bit. My other kid is the polar opposite and eats almost anything. Interestingly, for the most part these kids have tracked almost exactly the same for height and weight by age (except for the stretch when my picky kid had weight issues), which suggests to me that a lot of growth is genetics, not what they are eating.

this approach is good if you have healthy food in the house and your kid eats fruit and veggies. It won’t work if you give the kid nuggets, Mac n cheese, hot dogs etc and they never eat fruit or vegetables except for the occasional pouch.

I'm the pp with the picky 11yo, and we also give our kid chicken nuggets, boxed mac n cheese, and the occasional hot dog. Of course you shouldn't offer those every time they are hungry but I have no problem with chicken nuggets once a week or so, especially for a kid who doesn't get much other protein.

[Anonymous]

I'm with the PP who offers veggies as an appetizer. I didn't do it on purpose, I just started offering them as I was prepping dinner because my kid was hungry and that was what I was chopping but it works amazingly well for us. My 3yo will stand around the kitchen snacking on raw green beans that she will refuse to touch when served cooked with butter on a plate. Mysteries. Also, a tried and tested family trick is to offer frozen peas still frozen. Every child in my family (me, my sisters, my kids) will willingly and enthusiastically eat a bowl of frozen peas while also spitting out cooked ones.

I also somewhat unintentionally limit the amount of certain foods a meals -- my child cannot eat too many pancakes because I only made one batch of pancakes and we have finished it. Since she ate three, I'm not concerned she's going hungry or anything. Once I let her eat as many ribs as she wanted (I was so shocked she willingly ate something with meat in it honestly) and she threw up later so I think it's reasonable to put a (large, like adult-sized portion) limit on one individual food.

I will also say, I serve her very, very small helpings of things I doubt she'll like (e.g. pork chops in your example) so neither of us feel too much pressure about them.

Another thing I will do is track what food groups have been missed in meals and try to make up for them with snacks. E.g., if she only ate bread for lunch, I'll offer apples and peanut butter (those are two certain-to-be-eaten foods for us) for a snack so she's getting fruit and protein. She's more likely to be adventurous if she's been eating well; once she gets into a cycle of hangry No-I-Hate-It it's harder to try new things.