Four Ways to Keep Your Kids From Becoming Picky Eaters
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Preventing picky eating starts in infancy, before tastes grow more stubborn.
- Don’t overuse food pouches. Kids need to experience different flavors and textures.
- Children can learn to like foods they initially reject if exposed to them repeatedly.
As long as there are freezers stocked with chicken nuggets, there will be children who turn their noses up at salmon.
However, Susan Greenberg, a speech pathologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who works on “everything from the neck up,” she says, prefers not to call them picky eaters. “I would say they’re selective eaters. They have a limited range of foods in their repertoire.”
That might sound a bit gentle to parents who find mealtime to be a torturous battle against their kids’ selectiveness. But Greenberg asserts that children who reject a thoughtfully prepared, nutritious meal are not refusing foods they don’t like, but rather foods they haven’t experienced enough. Their palate needs more time to learn to enjoy them.
In Greenberg’s household, phrasing is key. “I never use the words, ‘You don't like.’ I always say something like, ‘Oh, that wasn't for you today. Let's try it again another time.’”
A mother of two, Greenberg understands that satisfying a picky—or how about developing?—eater can become an immense strain that parents don’t have the energy for after a day of performing countless other tasks. It leaves them struggling to choose the angel nutrition over the devil expedience—knowing it can also mean choosing rancor over peace.
To help build open-minded eaters who will widen their taste repertoire as they mature, Greenberg has set out tips to guide parents on balancing compromise with boundaries, while preserving a peaceful dinner table and their own sanity. Her consistent reminder: Don’t cave in to your child’s demands after one scorned meal.
“Think more about the big picture,” she says, “and what must happen to make them capable eaters as they grow up. This is the long game.”
Practice pouch control. Food pouches—squeezable packets of sweet-tasting pureed fruits and vegetables—are an oasis for parents, the meal choice of least resistance when time and patience are short, and convenience is cherished. Critics say food pouches condition children to reject anything that requires chewing or has a different mouthfeel.
Greenberg is more lenient. She is not automatically against food pouches, but warns that overusing them limits kids’ exposure to tastes other than purees, which leads to picky eating.
“I give my children pouches,” she says. “They have a place, but you need to also introduce different flavors and textures so children are able to accept foods as they get older. The research tells us that the more flavor and texture exposures you have, the more competent of an eater you're going to be later in life.”
Get to them early. Imperative to preventing picky eaters is getting ahead of the problem in infancy, once kids are able to consume solid foods—6 months old, says the American Academy of Pediatrics—and before their tastes grow fussier. “We have critical periods where kids are more likely to accept foods quicker,” Greenberg says.
Infancy, she says, is when eating habits are most pliable. Babies are more willing to give a food a second or third chance and are more likely to develop a liking for it. “They're going to need less exposures to a food than if you're trying to offer it to them when they're toddlers or even older.”
Greenberg cites studies done on the importance of introducing lumpy food—mashed banana or mashed avocado, for example—before 10 months of age.
“If you delay the introduction of lumpy food, that can have negative effects on the acceptance of food at 15 months,” she says, noting that one study showed these effects can inhibit kids’ eating up to 7 years of age.
Don’t give up, don’t give in. Greenberg implores parents to not despair if their kid pushes a food away on the first exposure to it. Instead, persist!
“It takes at least 10 times for some of us to decide if we like a food, and some research says even more than that,” she says. “So we know repeated exposures are important. You have to keep giving that food to kids.”
Not giving in is as important as not giving up, Greenberg says. Submitting to your child’s rejection of a meal you’ve made by providing an alternative they prefer promotes picky eating, and will cause their tastes to harden around just a few foods. If your kid won’t eat, one missed meal can be tolerated.
“Nutrition is not made meal by meal,” she says. “It's made over a week, over two weeks. It could just be they're not that hungry at that particular meal.”
Speech pathologist Susan GreenbergWe know repeated exposures are important. You have to keep giving that food to kids.
When parents practice repeated exposures, kids see that pushing a food away the first time doesn’t eliminate it from future meals. Greenberg says the message gets through: “Hey, this is going to be coming back at me more times, so don't be surprised when those peas are back on my plate."
Compromise, within limits. Greenberg favors a model for feeding children that was conceived by dietitian and author Ellyn Satter, MS, MSSW. Called the Division of Responsibility at Mealtime, it plainly draws the two roles of parent and child.
“It’s about not letting your kids do the jobs you're supposed to be doing,” Greenberg says. “Parents decide what is going to be served, when it will be served, and where it will be served. Kids decide how much they will eat.”
Greenberg makes it clear she isn’t diminishing the toll that the tug of wills with a picky eater can take on a parent, nor the temptation to circumvent it by reaching for a food pouch or defrosting some tater tots. She supports serving meals that show consideration for your child’s preferences, but within limits. A reasonable but firm give and take can develop habits in your kids that suppress picky eating.
“You're going to build a plate that might have something new and scary, something they like, and something they're OK with,” Greenberg says. “Whatever they eat, they eat; whatever they don't eat, they don't eat.”
