Put an end to mealtime battles! Try these 15 simple strategies from the Parenting Expert, Dr. Lawrence Cohen.
Play Dinnertime Games
When it's time to get supper ready, let your child play chef with you. Put on aprons and pretend you're cooks in a restaurant. Make up silly names for dishes you're preparing and have some fun adding food coloring to mashed potatoes or other foods. If your child is invested in making the meal, he or she may be more likely to eat it.
Avoid real arguments at dinner by making up something unimportant to "pretend argue" about. For example, "Let's see if we can get through a whole dinner without anyone saying the number seven!" Of course your kids will shout out that number, and you'll pretend in a silly way to be very upset. While they laugh and play, they may eat up their dinner without a fuss.
Give Kids More Control
Some children choose mealtimes to fight battles about independence and self-determination, so giving them some (limited) control over the weekly menu could alleviate some of that tension.
You can give kids non-menu control over dinnertime, too. Let your kids choose what color napkins to use and who sits where.
Give your picky eater some control over situations in other parts of the day, like selecting what to wear to school and choosing what games to play with you.
Don't Play Favorites
Try not to get into the habit of making kids their favorite foods every night--out of desperation to get them to eat! It's wonderful to put our love into cooking for our family, but it doesn't work to cook a child's favorite food as "proof" of that love.
Research on family mealtime suggests that if a child is given the food that everyone else eats, and is matter-of-factly expected to eat it, then they end up eating what the family eats.
To make the adjustment to eating the family dinner easier for your child, you might try telling him that you are going to change the rules and only make macaroni and cheese once a week as a special treat. And, again, get your kids involved in the menu planning, the shopping, and the cooking.
See the Big Picture
Think about your child's diet in terms of a week rather than meal by meal. If she gets a decent amount of good food on a weekly basis, it is perfectly fine if she has a dinner that consists of one noodle or one pea!
Consider supplementing your child's diet with a children's multivitamin and cut down on snacks and treats (so your child is more likely to be hungry at mealtimes).
Try not to worry about your child starving unless she is actually losing weight or getting sick. If you are really concerned about your child not eating enough, a visit to the pediatrician and/or a nutritionist may help calm your worries.
Encourage Adventure!
It is important that we understand there is a difference between a child who is reluctant to try anything new or different and a child who has a well-established dislike for one or two foods. It isn't torture to expect kids to try a taste of a new food every few months, but don't insist kids eat things they absolutely can't stand.
If kids say they "hate" a food they've never tried, what they really mean is that they don't want to venture beyond their two or three safe foods. In that case, you should keep encouraging them to try it.
Here's a good dinnertime rule you adopt with your family: You don't have to eat what you hate, but you are only allowed to hate a few things. In other words, you can't hate every single vegetable and every single protein source. And you can't hate something you've never tried!
Another approach is to just keep offering the foods that are on your regular rotations of favorite meals. By sheer repetition, these foods will become familiar, and kids will eventually try them and possibly like them.
