So, let's assume that picky eating can be due to nature or to giving in to kids' demands. If your kids are picky, I'm sure it's because of their nature. Regardless, you still need them to eat healthfully, so you'll need to adjust your parenting style a little too. Like I said, two weeks ago, your kids will eat when they're hungry. If they're willful, they might need to be a little hungrier than if they weren't, but they will eventually eat. Before Child Protective Services comes knocking on my door (which would indicate that this blog's gotten a lot more attention than I thought), I want to be clear that I'm not advocating starving your children. However, I am saying that you can't let their food preferences hold you hostage.
I've heard people who are closed-minded about food tell me time and time again, "If my parents had had the same attitude as yours, I would have starved." I tell them the same thing I'll tell you. No. They wouldn't. Deep down, we are all anthropologically programmed to survive. Never is that animalistic instinct more intact than during childhood. Sure, they don't have any logic circuits yet which makes them take weird risks. However, they still have an instinct to survive. Regardless of your views of how humans got to the top of the food chain and got to wear the clothes, we certainly didn't do it by refusing to eat something because it was different.
Here's help from the Science point of view. It takes at least 3 weeks of no nutritional value for someone to starve to death. That's a long time! That also means that if your child refuses to eat your tuna casserole tonight, she's gonna be ok. She'll be ok because the next morning, you'll give her breakfast just like any other morning and life will continue as normal.
So, what do we do with picky kids to get them to eat the things they need? I have a few tips I've compiled from the internet and people who have dealt with picky kids, but I'd be glad to do a supplement with your tips and tricks later. Let's start with what you need to know and expect from your child:
- Be realistic. Your four-year-old is not going to be able to eat the same amount of food as you. Their tummies are tiny; therefore, their portions should be too. When you're measuring out food for your kids keep this in mind: A piece of protein should be the size of their palm; carbohydrates should be about the size of their closed fist, and they can eat as many vegetables as they want (but only give them a quarter of what you gave yourself).
- Don't bribe them. I would hazard a guess that every overweight person in this country has a bad relationship with food for one reason or another. Break that cycle right now and don't give your kids rewards or punishments for eating or not eating their food. For example, cleaning their plate should no longer result in dessert or Xbox time or a movie next weekend. Food should be eaten because it's nutritious. If they don't eat it, they go hungry, but they don't have to watch their siblings eat dessert while they do it.
- Cut out snacks. It's fine to have a half peanut butter sandwich ready when your son comes home from school, but it's not fine to have the half peanut butter sandwich as well as an open bag of chips, fruit roll ups, and Coke sitting around waiting for him to eat whatever, whenever. Leaving easy, unhealthy snacks lying around makes it so he doesn't have to eat dinner. He can just fill up on junk then claim he's not hungry. My daughter is a huge snacker/food stealer. We've had to put anything she might try to sneak up in the cabinets where she can't reach it as well as putting the step stool where she has to move things to get at it. The second we did that, though, she started eating better at dinner.
- Remove dessert for a while. I just heard children cry out in pain as I typed that. I really don't think dessert has to be a part of your everyday routine, and if it is now, it's probably a leverage factor for your kids. If you're not serving dessert, you don't have some kids getting dessert and some not because of a refusal to eat. Regardless of political views, I have to say Michelle Obama's method of restricting dessert is perfect. They only have dessert on weekends. That's 2 days out of the week that the kids have sweet stuff available to them. Make sure to serve a meal everyone likes on those days.
- Don't make them sit at the table alone. As I mentioned before, if my daughter refuses to eat, she has to sit with us until the adults are done. At that point, she can do whatever she wants for the rest of the evening. However, on the few nights she has refused to eat, we're very adamant that she gets up when we get up. There's none of the "Sit there until your plate's empty" mentality in our family. There are nights that she eats very, very, very slowly, but that's a different story. Even then, at least one person will either stay at the table with her or at a table nearby so she's not alone.
- Don't serve it to them cold or for breakfast. Here's how every parent's story that I've heard goes about letting their kids go hungry once or twice. The kid thinks he's gotten off scott free for about an hour. Then they're hungry. At that point, about half of the time, they come back to the parents wanting to eat. If this happens, give them food. Don't act like they're out of luck. Feed them! They have given you the control. Heat their plate up (which you've very intelligently wrapped in saran wrap and put in the fridge for just this occasion) and set it in front of them. Don't make them eat it cold. That's just going to reinforce the "this is nasty" response. Show them that you're proud of them for respecting your authority. Sit at the table and talk or read a book while they eat. However, if this doesn't happen, don't be mean and serve it for breakfast. You want your child going to school with a good breakfast, and shoving his or her willfulness in his or her face is just going to bring up tension. You can always serve it on leftover night.
- Serve something she'll like. If you have a night that your child chooses to go hungry, serve something that everyone will enjoy the next night. If that means making a pizza from scratch (we'll go over that some day), that's fine. Make sure she knows that every night won't be filled with weird things she's never seen, and you still know how to make her favorite meal. If you pair it with the game I'm going to describe next, you'll get your way without her knowing.
But what if you get to that impasse where you know your child needs the Beta Carotene in carrots and you've literally tried everything (glazed carrot recipe coming soon) and they won't eat it? Then you get to play a little game I like to call "Being a Parent" where you give them what's good for them, even if they think they hate it. This game does not require you to pin your child down and hold his mouth closed over carrots until he eats them. That will land you in jail. Instead it requires 3 pieces of equipment: A food processor, something to cook the veggies in, and secrecy. Rules to the game: Don't get caught, don't get caught, and don't get caught.
Step 1 is to cook your vegetable. You'll need some time where you can do this in private. If you're doing worst-case scenario carrots, you'll need at least half an hour. I prefer a to steam my vegetables in a rice cooker, but you can use a steam inset or just boil them in water for a while. Each of those methods has a different cooking time for each vegetable, so run a Google search on it first. Cook the vegetable thoroughly, or until a fork will easily pierce and be removed from it.
Step 2 is to puree it. I'm sure you can use a potato masher if you have to, but try to find a cheap food processor and just let it run until you have nothing but mush. If there are chunks, let it run a little longer. At this point, you can hide your little secret in baggies where only you know where to find them or use them immediately. Most moms have a different veggie for each kid, and you can use them in tandem.
Step 3 is to hide the vegetables in your child's favorite food. Does your kid like spaghetti? Perfect! Mix some pureed goodness into the sauce. Chances are, she'll never see it. The same goes for meatloaf, the ricotta cheese for stuffed shells, and mashed potatoes (add cheese to mask the colors). The best thing about this method is that you don't even need to hide the veggies in main dishes. I have a friend whose mom hides broccoli in her brownies and sends her son to school with one every single day. It's a great method. Heck, you could hide six servings of vegetables in your child's next birthday cake!
How do you sneak nutrition into your food? What's worked and what hasn't? Tweet to @cookingcheap
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