How to Get Picky Eaters to Eat Without Losing Your Mind

When I first became a parent, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure my kids had the best nutrition possible. I served a variety of healthy foods and received an overload of advice on how to make kids eat everything. My first kid liked most anything I put in front of her. I thought all the “advice” I was following worked wonderfully. Unfortunately, even though I followed the same plan, my next couple kids did not eat everything or even try everything. Picky eating can be stressful and challenging. I’m going to share a bit about our journey to get our picky eaters to eat more food.

When our kids first started to become picky eaters, my husband wasn’t concerned at all. He was a picky eater as a child and grew up on cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. At first, the thought of allowing my kids to have such a narrow diet scared me. I was afraid they wouldn’t get the nutrition they needed and that they would be unhealthy. After I realized that was the root of my concern, I thought about the fact that my husband was healthier than I was. However, I was the one eating almost all foods. That realization took some of the pressure off. 

Recent Studies Show Challenges with the Clean Plate Club

I grew up being part of the clean plate club. That meant that I had to finish my plate before I could get up from the table. Yes, I ate just about anything. However, I still remember, as a young child, falling asleep in my food because I did not like it and could not take another bite. Studies have recently shown that the clean plate club can create unhealthy relationships with food and overeating as adults.

After hearing all the tricks to prevent picky eating, and recent studies, we would implement “no thank you bites.” This meant that they had to take 3 bites of everything on their plate each time it was served. This helped introduce them to the foods multiple times, without the pressure of eating it all. We also wouldn’t let them have dessert until they finished something nutritious with protein.

Why does this advice work from some people and not others?

We would go to friend’s houses and see that their kids ate everything, without any complaints, and wonder what we were doing wrong. They would say their kids didn’t have an option and just had to eat what they gave them. We’d go to other friend’s houses and see that they had picky eating challenges worse than we did. These friends were super quick to cater to their child’s preferences. We often slipped back to thinking that the problem was we didn’t make our kids eat more of what we made. This would cause us to try harder.

Our plan seemed to be backfiring no matter how hard we tried. A couple of my kids ended up with cereal or a sandwich every dinner. I was getting frustrated because I would cook a nice dinner and only my husband, first born, and I would eat it. I was fixing quick short order meals for everyone else on top of the time it took to make dinner. It was exhausting and incredibly challenging for them to eat at someone else’s house. This was not only due to picky eating but also because of some food sensitivities/challenges layered into the mix. All my picky eaters ate different foods from each other. So, trying to give someone else a meal idea, that all my kids would eat, was nearly impossible. 

How we were able to get our picky eaters to eat

One summer, Alisha from www.yourkidstable.com was doing a free workshop for picky eaters. I signed up and learned so much during that workshop. (I mentioned her in a different article, and her blog has been super helpful to me in my journey. At this time, I do not know Alisha or get compensated in any way by sending you to her site. As I’m writing this article, she is promoting another free picky eating workshop.)

I realized that some of my kids had food jags. That is when their picky eating becomes so bad that they will only eat one particular brand of a certain food. For example, one of my kids loved Mac & cheese. Unfortunately, it got to the point where he would only eat a certain kind of Kraft. (That’s a food jag.) I knew their picky eating was bad, but I didn’t realize how to help them.

Understanding what causes picky eating helps to get them to eat more

Her workshop showed me that many of my picky eaters’ challenges started with sensory processing and was getting worse because of the advice I was following. I realized that my pickiest eater fell in the category of a “snowball.” He started being picky and he was becoming more picky over time. 

I think my “snowball” child either became picky because of sensory or a traumatic strep test. He had some challenges giving up his pacifier because that was his security that nothing would get in his mouth and gag him again. At the time I attended the workshop, he would only eat cereal, spicy California rolls made with white rice, and peanut butter and honey sandwiches. She explained that “snowball” kids become picky because of some situation, whether it’s sensory, trauma, physical challenges, etc. They become more picky over time because of a built up anxiety over food.

New strategies implemented

Alisha showed me how to remove the anxiety over coming to the dinner table. She showed how to expose them to foods without being a short order cook. She did this by encouraging me to make foods that I knew my picky eaters would eat, and serve them as a side during the meal. This way they would still have something to eat, but it wasn’t just for them. 

Alisha also taught me to encourage my kids to put a small amount of everything on their plate and play with their food. I also was to not care whether they ate it or not. This was so they could see, smell it, and touch it without having to eat it. She said that sometimes the sensory overload of a dinner is too much for some kids’ systems to handle. Caring about whether or not they are eating the food, is what’s creating the anxiety.

What we started doing to get our picky eaters to eat

I decided to try these things. I started by encouraging the kids to come sit at the dinner table, whether they were hungry or not. To get them to stay at the table, we started playing a game as a family where we asked each person their favorite part of the day and their most challenging part of the day. I put a little of everything on each of their plates, including the food that I knew they liked. When someone said they didn’t like something, I would reply, “that’s ok, you don’t have to eat it.” I then ignored whether or not they ate it. Over time, I found that they would end up trying it.

We started seeing progress right away

One time, when we had asparagus, and my pickiest eater said he didn’t like it, I had him see how many letters he could make out of the sticks. He made a few and ended up telling me, “Oh, mom, I forgot. I do like this!” 

My other kids have started eating more of the food I make and actually getting seconds. My pickiest eater started making huge progress in the foods that he eats. Our family has even commented on how great it is that he eats so much more. He still doesn’t care for too much meat, but there are some meals where he likes it. Most days I find a way of incorporating something he likes into my meal, which is a huge success.

“From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is satisfied; he is filled with the product of his lips. Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭18:20-21‬ ‭HCSB‬‬

If anything in my story resonated with you, I can’t recommend enough checking out www.yourkidstable.com, especially if Alisha is doing a picky eating workshop.

What about you? Have you experienced picky eating with your kids? Are you frustrated by hearing that if you give them enough variety or make them eat it, they won’t be picky eaters?