How to Get Your Kids to Eat Healthy (or Anything): Mealtime Battles
Feeling frustrated because you can’t seem to get your kids to eat healthy (whether that means vegetables, fruit, protein) OR simply to just eat the meal you serve them?
Fortunately, there are effective ways to encourage your child to eat healthy. Yes, they do exist! However, they won’t work overnight. As parents, we’re often in the market for a quick fix — we don't have much time as it is, and, when it comes to our children, everything feels so pressing. But as with most things in parenting, and in life in general, this is going to take a bit of patience from you.
I speak from experience. My almost-4-year-old is a creature of habit and only likes very specific foods. I catered to him for-ev-er until I decided that, for his long-term benefit and my sanity (being a daily short order cook is no fun), we were going to work on expanding his palette. I love how sophisticated that sounds.
Here are the steps I used to start getting my child to eat a wider variety of healthy, nourishing foods. And to even eat foods that are "mixed together," like lasagna, a one-time sacrilege in my son's eyes.
How to Get Your Kids to Eat Healthy
1. You decide what’s for dinner
First rule of mealtime: You decide what’s for dinner.
As parents, our job is to decide what’s for dinner and to make it. It’s not our children’s job. There are exceptions, of course! Like when it’s our child’s birthday and we ask them to pick their favorite meal. Or sometimes, it might work for us (in terms of our schedules, what's in the fridge, etc.) to give our child options one evening. For example: Would you like a cheese quesadilla or grilled chicken for dinner? I am able to make either tonight.
But at the end of the day, you are in charge of what food is offered, when it’s offered, and where it's offered.
Second rule of mealtime: Your child decides what and how much to eat.
Our child’s job at mealtimes, on the other hand, is to decide how much they eat of what is offered and whether they eat a particular offering at all.
If you serve your child veggie lasagna but they reject it and ask for chicken nuggets instead, and then you make the chicken nuggets, well then you’ve just conceded your role and put your child in charge of what’s for dinner.
And, ultimately, they’ll never eat the veggie lasagna or whatever it is you’ve offered.
Instead, calmly explain that this is what’s for dinner tonight. They are welcome to eat what and how much they like, but there are no other options. This is what can fill their tummy.
Sure there will be some protesting. Maybe even a full-blow tantrum. But this should come as no surprise. In the past, you’ve always made them food they’ll eat and never served them food they don’t want to eat (or, if you have, you’ve swiftly removed it from their plate… I’m guilty!). So you’re changing what they’ve come to expect, and that’s really hard for children: the misalignment of expectation and reality.
Related Read: A Revolutionary Way to Deal with Tantrums (that I wish I’d known sooner!!)
As side benefit of this is that children start to feel empowered to make decisions regarding their own bodies. We never want to tell them how or what to feel, because we never want others to tell them how or what to feel. They and only they are in charge of their bodies.
2. One safe food
OK great! But what if my child embarks on a hunger strike and refuses to eat? Then I’ll have an undernourished, hangry child who will probably wake up in the middle of the night because of a grumbling tummy.
First of all, when children are hungry hungry, they will eat. They will not allow themselves to starve. I should note that this is not a technique of starvation or deprivation. Your child will never get to that point. But if you have concerns, always speak to your child's pediatrician!
To mitigate the hangries, I recommend always serving a “safe” food for dinner, something you know your child will eat. This could be pita and hummus, bread and butter, rice and peas, quinoa, crackers and cheese, apples and peanut butter. Just make sure it’s not a big enough serving to count as a meal in itself. Keep it modest!
A safe food has two benefits:
You don’t have to worry about your child “going to bed hungry”
Having a safe food on the plate will temper the “foreignness” of the other food you’ve served them. By placing the two side by side on the same plate, you set up a positive association between a safe, accepted food and a new or previously rejected food.
Related Read: 60+ Easy, Yummy Meals for Picky Toddlers and Young Children!
3. Just say no to the "two-more-bites" rule
Please do not say: Two more bites, please…
As I mentioned in the first point, your child is in charge of determining how much and even whether they eat. Asking them to “eat two more bites” or to “finish their carrots” before they leave the table undermines that power.
Asking them two eat two more bites of something isn’t going to make them like the food or make them more inclined to finish their meals in the future. Instead, it’s likely to backfire.
That’s because the more pressure you put on them, the more stress they will feel, the more contentious dinner will become, or the more likely they’ll be to resist eating or trying new things. Or all three of these things. This is exactly the opposite of what we want to accomplish.
Asking your child to eat more can also cause confusion regarding hunger cues. Maybe they’ve stopped eating because they’re heeding their body's signals to them that they are simply not hungry anymore. Maybe they’ve even realized they’re already a little too full. By asking them to eat more when they’re not hungry, we are overriding their natural hunger cues, telling them not to trust their bodies, and potentially setting them up for future issues with food.
That said, sometimes I’ll notice that my son is distracted during mealtime by something that’s happening around him. If this is the case, and I see that he’s not eating, I’ll casually ask:
Do you want any more pasta? (or whatever is for dinner), or...
Are you still hungry? If you are, there’s more food on your plate.
This helps kick start him if he is indeed hungry. If he isn’t hungry, then case closed.
4. Dessert on plate
This might seem a little controversial to some, but I almost always put dessert on my son’s plate with the rest of his dinner (or lunch). Dessert, by the way, is something small, like a few M&Ms or a gingerbread cookie.
I do this primarily to take the pressure off dinner. Again, the more pressure you put on your child to eat, the more likely they are to resist eating. I find that putting dessert on the plate helps neutralize not only the dessert itself but all of the foods on offer. This helps temper the foreignness and fear over other new or previously feared foods.
It also has the added benefit of not turning sweets into “forbidden” or “bad” foods. Food is food. There is no hierarchy of good and bad foods, just foods that serve different (nutritional, social, cultural) purposes. And this, in turn, cultivates healthy as opposed to disordered relationships with foods. As our child moves into adulthood, they can start to make balanced decisions and what and how much to eat of something because, and this is key, they don’t fear it.
In Sum: Get Kids to Eat Healthy (or Anything!)
It’s been a work in progress, but my son is making great strides and slowly starting to eat new foods, even those his previously rejected (like tomato sauce!).
The key to expanding your child's palette is avoid power struggles. Don't force your child into eating something they don't want or aren't ready for. It's hard, because you want to make sure your child is well-nourished and eating a well-rounded diet. But when you put the pressure on them, your tactics are bound to backfire. In addition to resisting you, your child may even grow to hate mealtimes and to develop fears around or unhealthy relationships with food. And that's of course the last thing you want!
I hope this post about kids, eating, and mealtimes has been enlightening. You've got this, mama!
Related Read: 10 things that are NOT your job as a mother (which many people will tell you are)
