From Feeding Therapists to Parents: Tips for helping picky eaters
In this article, we will be sharing some tips for picky eaters along with some lesser known ideas for helping picky eaters add foods to their diet.
Simple tips for helping picky eaters:
Sit with your child and eat at the table whenever possible. Eat as a family. You are your child's best role model.
Offer new foods often. They won’t know what they like until they try something new.
Offer the same food in different ways. For example, you can fun cookie cutters so an apple is actually a spaceship, bread is a dinosaur.
Let your child feed themselves. Never force feed. If they back away from a food, honor that.
Reduce distractions at mealtimes.
Be aware of pressure. Even saying “just try a bite” can put a child into “fight, flight or freeze” mode. It’s so hard to eliminate these common phrases, but try your hardest to say something like “well if we don’t want to eat it, how about lick it or even kiss it?” Any kind of interaction with food is positive and, believe it or not, is one step closer to eating.
Involve your child in food preparation. This provides low-pressure opportunities to interact with food, even if they do not yet consume it. The sensory system is involved in the sight, touch and smell of a variety of foods during preparation.
Make sure to provide specific, predictable (when possible) meal and snack times to avoid grazing. Grazing reduces hunger at mealtimes.
Some tips that aren’t as well known may be:
Offer food in family style so they can serve themselves and decide on their own items and portions.
Offer “deconstructed” versions. Taco fixin’s separately, instead of a fully-assembled taco. Casserole parts (e.g. each ingredient separately), instead of the whole casserole.
Offer a “no thank you” plate. The child has the option to pick up (and thus interact with) a food that they just simply don’t want from their plate and put it on the “no thank you” plate. They’re still getting interaction (touch, sight, smell) with the food with zero pressure to eat.
Make sure they are sitting straight up with their feet supported on the floor, a footrest, or a stool.
Talk to them. Make mealtime one of their favorite times of the day. Ask about their day and tell them something funny about yours. Have everyone bring a new joke to the table, anything to get some positive interaction around mealtime instead of what maybe was a stressful, worry-inducing time in the past.
Play games. Some examples include: “I spy”, “I’m thinking of a fruit that is fuzzy”, etc.
Use fun utensils. Everything tastes better on a fun plate, or even eaten out of a muffin tin instead of a boring plate. There are also fun animal picks instead of boring old forks. Eat a whole meal with toothpicks, chopsticks or even hands.
Feeding therapy uses evidence-based, data-backed strategies, but it may take a lot of preparation and patience from the parent as well. Even with feeding therapy, meaningful and long-lasting change may not occur without carryover and change at home. That being said, we know parent burnout is real, and parents are already doing the best they can. Every day doesn’t have to be perfect. Try the best you can for consistency. Commit to making even little changes and just do the best you can. Work with your therapist to identify which changes would be most impactful while also being most feasible in your family’s specific situation.