It can be a battle of wills at times when you have a child that is a picky eater who refuses to try new foods let alone eat a meal.
When it comes to meal times, you might find yourself at your wits end and have given up trying to get your picky eater to eat let alone try a new food.
Don't make your meal times a chore by trying to force your fussy eater to eat new foods.
There are several ways to make meal time a fun experience for both you and your child.
I.
Introducing Babies to Regular Solid Foods If your baby is at the stage where it is time to start introducing new foods, you should give yourself as well as your baby a good amount of time when it comes to mealtime and a good deal of patience on your part will help as well.
You should also set an expectation that most of the food will come out and not be eaten by your baby.
Introducing a new food to your baby, especially if she is a picky eater, is a process all in itself and it is usually recommended that you start out with an easily digested food such as a single grain cereal.
Once that is mastered, you can move on to vegetables.
Start out with the yellow and orange vegetables first because they have a mild taste to them.
Don't get discouraged that your baby appears not to like the new food because, in many cases, your baby will need to be introduced to that new food several times before she accepts it.
When it comes to getting your fussy eater to try new foods, especially a baby, you need to keep the food choices simple and you should introduce new foods to a baby very slowly.
Before you know it, your baby will be enjoying a wide array of foods.
II.
Helping Picky Eater Toddlers If you have a picky eater who is a toddler that is simply struggling with eating food let alone trying new foods, a good way to encourage your toddler to eat food is to let him help in meal planning.
It will be a good way to also teach your child about healthy eating.
You should be ready to have patience when it comes to introducing new foods to your children.
Encouraging them in the planning of the meals and giving them choices on which foods they would like to have for that meal is a good start.
Take your picky eater with you when it's time to go to the grocery store so that your picky eater can choose his food as well as his healthy snacks.
But do not let your picky eater choose whatever he wants because he'll just choose the food that he is accustomed to eating.
Instead, give them a few options - "Honey, would you like chicken, spaghetti or potatoes tonight?" You might want to limit the choices in a way that leads them to choose the food you want them to eat.
For example, if you want your picky eater to eat chicken and he is already familiar with chicken but has trouble eating it, you could arrange the choices so that the other choices are foods that you know he won't eat, which hopefully will lead him to select the chicken.
Another good way to encourage the fussy eater is by making meal time a family event by encouraging your child to help prepare meals by either rinsing their vegetables or help stir the batter or even let them participate in setting the table.
Pretty soon, your toddler will start to associate mealtime as a fun experience because they will have helped in the planning, the shopping and even the preparation.
Don't give up on that picky eater of yours just quite yet.
By encouraging that toddler to try new foods and teaching that eating is fun, your mealtimes will be a pleasant experience for the whole family.