How to Overcome Your Picky Toddler's Eating
I went to this amazing talk at my pediatrician’s office and learned a BUNCH of tips and tricks to stop picky toddler eating because my little toddlers have become a lil picky! Then again, their mamma isn’t super fond of veggies either ;)
The average toddler serving is about a quarter of an adult size serving.
5 important nutrients:
Calcium - which you can find in milk, yogurt, cheese and almonds.
Vitamin D - super important in the winter for you snowy types! You can find it in salmon, milk and eggs.
Iron - which is in red meat, dark leafy greens, soy beans and, believe it or not… raisins!
Zinc - in red meat, beans and ready-eat-cereal
Healthy fats - we still drink whole milk in this family and we choose the one that has extra Vitamin D and DHA added to it.
DHA can be found in fatty fish and other healthy fats.
One of the best tips I came away with is to set a timer for 10 minutes at the table so the child can see the timer going down, and to let them know they need to sit at the table until it pings. It’s important to make him stay at the table even if he doesn’t want to eat, so he associates the dinner table with eating time. We also close the kitchen in-between meals so they know that they need to eat at meal times (in other words, no grazing!)
what you’ll need for food tic-tac-toe
Fresh Green Beans (pre-cut to save time!)
Two different colours of fruit or vegetables
Two willing picky participants!
It was pretty hard to get the tic-tac-toe board set up because they kept eating the green beans, but hey I guess that means its working!
Aura shotgunned the blueberries whilst Tudor humbly took on the raspberries… before Aura ended up just eating his raspberries anyway! This swiftly divulged from a friendly match of tic-tac-toe to a full-on eating contest!
It was really nice to see them work together and play together using their minds, even though they don’t know how to play properly.
Picky eating is really common in kids 2-5 years old but will usually end before school age. When they are toddlers, their taste buds turn over and replenish every 10 days so that’s why they may hate something they loved last week!
My biggest takeaways were:
Eat together as a family when possible
Offer a variety of foods with one thing your child will always like
Always be trying new foods (we like to try new spices and condiments and always go for a new option when we go out to eat)
Don’t say out loud that your child is picky as this reinforces the behaviour
Most importantly, make food FUN! Especially in lunchboxes, try and make fun shapes with sandwiches and make colourful, interactive foods. I like to cut grilled cheese sandwiches in to the shapes of airplanes and trains!
If you head on over to my Amazon store here, (I’m now an Amazon Influencer so you can shop any of my posts!) I’ve listed some great books and products I’ve found help with on the topic which you can shop.
Remember, this is something millions of moms are going through and it WILL pass! A good trick is to get the kids involved in the cooking process, as they will want to cook what they’ve made.
Stay tuned for more fun-food based content!
