10 Tips For Dealing With Picky Eaters

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

These 10 Tips For Dealing with picky eaters will help you and your child. Working with children to get them to eat healthier foods who are also picky eaters presents this challenge for parents: getting them to try new healthy foods!

If a child has a limited diet because of picky eaters syndrome, have no fear. There are things that you can do to help. The main thing you want to prevent from happening is to bring frustration to the table. I know that is hard. You want your picky eater to eat better. But frustration will slow the process down or prevent the process from happening.

I’ve worked with children for the last 15 years. One thing that I’ve learned without a doubt is that lecturing on why they should eat something never works! When children hear the same piece of information over and over again, they simple get good at one thing: letting the information go in one ear and out the other. You can tell your children until you are blue in the face to “try it, you might like it.” It doesn’t work. Actually, when we sound like a tape recorder, we actually teach children to NOT listen to us.

So instead of fighting this losing battle, let’s look at these tips for picky eaters that can really help.

1. Get your child enrolled in cooking classes for kids or cooking camps. This will give your child hands on experience and make them feel like a real chef.

2. Plan meals with your children. Give them a set of meal ideas and let them help you determine what’s for dinner each night.

3. Use yogurt based dips and give children vegetables to have fun and dip.

4. Reintroduce foods periodically, don’t make a big deal if they don’t try it during the reintroduction phase.

5. Don’t say things to make the child eat. Saying things like, “There are starving people in the world so eat all of your food” or “Eat your veggies, they are good for you” simply isn’t effective.

6. Don’t scold, put down, or make fun of the child for not eating something.

7. Be a good role model – just eat good foods in front of your kids, let them see you do it, but try not to say things like, “Mommy eats it so you should try it too.”

8. Cut back on junk without announcing it. Just slowly start to cut down on the junk in the house. This is important for developing the picky eaters taste buds for other foods.

9. Use fresh ingredients as much as possible and stay away from fast food in general.

10. Have fun in the kitchen. Let your child design a picture on a plate with sliced apples, bananas, pears, etc.

You will be amazed at the changes that will occur. I’ve worked with dozens of picky eaters. The best tip I can give is to get the child in the kitchen with you doing anything that you can think of. You will need to teach your child how to do certain things with each new task but the time invested is well worth it in the long run!

Feel free to post comments or questions.

Michelle