boy helping to cook foods with his family

10 Tips to Help Picky Eaters Accept New Foods: Part 2

In last week’s blog (Part 1), I shared the sensory steps that kids often go through when learning to accept a new food. Your child may not be ready to chew and swallow a new food; however, he/she may be comfortable looking, squishing, smelling, or kissing the food. In time, he/she will work toward food acceptance, at his/her own pace.

Parents and kids both have jobs at mealtimes:

Ellyn Satter is a renowned Registered Dietician who termed the “Division of Responsibility” or Golden Rule in feeding: Adults decide what food is served, when it is served, and where. The child decides how much to eat, and whether to eat at all. I highly recommend her website (link in references below) and resources. I often share Ellyn’s golden rule as a handout with the families I work with and I ask them to post-in on their fridge as a daily reminder:

10 Tips to Help Parents with their Feeding Job:

1. Family Meals

Family meals offer social and communication time
Learning opportunities about family foods and positive role-modeling

2. Regular Meal-Snack-Meal-Snack-Meal Schedule

Allow 3-4 hours between meals for appetite development
Avoid grazing throughout the day will help with growth
Monitor the length of meals (20-30 minutes for meals and 10-15 minutes for snacks)

3. Liquid Intake

Limit juice intake to 4-6 ounces per day to allow appetite for food
For children over age 1, limit milk to 2-cups (approximately 16 ounces) per day.
Offer milk after meals vs. before meals.

4. Food exploration/play and repeated exposure to new foods

Play with food! Have fun with food!
Present new foods for learning during mealtimes once the food has become more familiar. New foods could be presented on a separate or divided plate at mealtimes until your child is comfortable with the foods on his/her plate
Follow the 75-25 rule (75% of the plate familiar foods: 25% of the plate new foods)

5. Food chaining = making very small (teeny tiny) changes to existing food preferences

Start small (the changes should not be noticed by your child)
Hold any changes for 1-2 weeks then gradually increase
Make one change at a time

6. Respect your child’s feeding and hunger cues

It's normal for your child’s caloric intake to vary from meal to meal.
It’s important to let children learn to follow their own hunger/satiety cues.
As adults, we don’t eat the same amount every day and every meal. This applies to children too.

7. Feeling Safe and Building Trust

Ongoing mealtime power struggles can actually contribute to picky eating and food refusal. Pressuring kids to eat is often unintentional, but it can lead to reducing a child’s likelihood to eat
Successful mealtimes are built on trust
Avoid tricking, pushing, or forcing at mealtimes
Allow your child to get the food out of her mouth or off of her plate (e.g., using an “all-done bowl”)

8. Involvement in mealtime process

Encourage your child to help set the table or serve foods to others
Cook together or ask you child to help with food preparation (e.g., stirring, sprinkling, chopping, serving food to others)
Allow your child to have some control by offering a choice between 2 acceptable foods

9. Novelty

Offer foods in courses to maintain interest in the meal vs all foods at once
Look for fun feeding utensils/plates
Fun food presentation on the plate (e.g., clown face, train, etc.)

10. Use of appropriate distractions

Try to incorporate food or mealtime-related distractions (e.g., their own bowl and spoon)
YOU can be a fun distraction! Talk about something at mealtimes other than the food and eating (e.g., going to the park, Peppa Pig, a friend from school).

If you’re feeling too stressed, try to walk away and take a break. Research shows that pressuring, forcing, and bribing kids to eat does not work. Seek help from a professional if you are facing feeding challenges. Things can significantly improve with intervention.