3 Tips for Picky Eating
Picky eating is one of the biggest stressors for parents. I won’t even try adding imagery to take you back to a stressful moment at the table because if you’re here, that feeling is probably fresh. Here are three tips to get you started with understanding your child, expanding their diet, and achieving mealtime peace.
Find the source of picky eating
To address picky eating, the most important thing is to discover what the root cause of the picky eating is. There are definitely overlaps between the kinds of picky eaters, but knowing where to focus your energy makes a huge difference in your resilience when making changes.
Causes of Picky Eating
Sensory Needs
Control Seeking
Poor appetite
Sensory Needs
Kids can be sensory seeking and sensory sensitive or a combination of both. When their sensory buckets are full, participating in additional sensory experiences can be challenging. The goal is to limit inputs where they are sensory avoidant/sensitive and add in stimulus in areas where they are sensory seeking. For the quickest results, you’ll want to offer new foods that meet their sensory needs, instead of just choosing a food you would like them to eat.
Answer the following questions for your child with either likes, avoids, or indifferent.
Do they like messy hands?
Do they like strong smells?
Do they like bright lights ?
Do they like loud sounds?
Do they like running into walls, jumping into the couch, or being squeezed? (positive pressure)
Do they have preferred textures (hard, crunchy, soft, mushy, smooth, dry, wet, etc.)
Do they prefer specific flavors (sweet, salty, savory, plain, etc)
Now take a moment to reflect on mealtimes. Are meal times meeting their sensory needs (are they loud, are there strong smells, etc). If not, how can you limit these exposures where your child is sensitive and increase exposures where they are seeking?
Control Seeking
Control seeking kids require a different perspective. The biggest barrier is learning how to give kids autonomy without giving up your parental authority. Control seeking kids may not eat a food when you offer it, but will eat it when offered by someone else. They may not eat a food while your watching, but will try a new food on their own time. Control seeking kids thrive when they get to cook, build their plates on their own, or even when they are allowed to experiment with food on their own!
Poor appetite
Kids with poor appetite often have to be reminded to eat, they never ask for food, and only seem to eat well when offered their favorite foods. If you’re child has low appetite, you may be chasing them around trying to get them to take one more bite while they play or offering snacks every few minutes to increase their intake.
Set a schedule
No matter what kind of picky eater you have, a solid schedule makes a huge difference. I prefer some sort of visual schedule for most kids but it really depends on what your child will thrive with. A visual schedule can be as simple as a whiteboard or piece of paper on the fridge that uses either picture or words (play to your child’s strengths) and can be marked off in some way (check mark, magnets, etc.).
Types of schedules
Day Planner with Times
The Day Planner with Times is great for kids that can tell time and perceive it. List out all the activities for the day and the times that they will happen. Include things like the steps to a morning routine and night time routine, going to school, therapies, and I like to include free play time, especially if you don’t always have a plan for the day. The important thing is that your child knows what’s coming next and you can refer to the schedule to support transitions.
Day Planner without times
If your child struggles with times, leave the times off. Plan the day with images or words and use the schedule for sequencing and transitions.
Meals Time Schedule
This is a really simple way to get started. Add 3 meals and 3 snacks to your “schedule” and have your child mark them off when they are done.Timers
If your child transitions well with timers but you think they will struggle with or not participate with a visual schedule, use timers to set the duration between meals and snacks.
The schedule
The “ideal” feeding schedule for your child is to offer food every 2-3 hours. Most often, this looks like 3 meals and 2-3 snacks per day. Meals and snacks should be limited to 15-30 minutes. Here’s why:
A schedule helps promote appetite awareness. When kids are grazing all day, it’s harder for them to determine when they are actually hungry.
A schedule helps with transitions. When kids know what’s coming, it’s easier to participate and move into new activities.
When kids graze all day, they can end up eating way to much or way to little.
If this sounds incredibly overwhelming or you feel like you are so far away from having any sort of schedule, that may indicate that you need to bring in extra help (ME), but here are some steps to help:
Learn to wait
Setting a timer for a few seconds or a few minutes OR having a child participate in a short task before providing food when they ask for them is a good first step to creating space between meals and snacks.
Offer more eating occasions
If 3 meals and 3 snacks is nowhere near the amount of eating occasions you’re at now, start by reducing snacks by 1 every week.
Redirect
Often, kids use food as a coping mechanism for stressful situations. Look at what other options they have for self-soothing and request that they participate in that activity first, then if they are still hungry, provide them with a snack.
Schedules have the most success when the child is involved in creating them, especially when it comes to control seekers. Allowing the child to develop their own schedule can create the opportunity to put the onus of eating back on them. When it’s time to eat and the child is uninterested, you can use language like “Remember, YOU decided that you wanted breakfast after watching a show, you watched your show and now it’s time for breakfast.”
Perfect the Offer
I’m sure you’re thinking, “If I knew what the right foods were, I would be offering them.” Let’s take a moment to zoom out and talk about general nutrition recommendations…
Every meal should contain a protein, a carb, and a fat and every snack should have either a carb and a fat or a carb and a protein. Layering on top of that, we want to offer at least one preferred food with the new foods. Now, let’s think about the root cause of your child’s picky eating and how we can offer food that’s right for them.
Sensory Needs
Start by choosing foods that are in their sensory preferences. If they like hard and crunchy foods, start there and build variety in any way you can. The goal is to get a few wins under both your belt and your childs before pushing the boundaries. We want the child to start to be comfortable with small changes that will lead to more resilience with larger more impactful changes.
Control Seeking
Control seekers need choice, but we don’t want them to rule the show. Here are a few ways to engage your control seeking kid without giving up parental authority.
They choose one food, you choose the other.
You offer 2-3 food options and they choose what to eat.
Let them pick out a new food at the store.
Let them help with cooking and choosing ingredients when possible.
Serve meals family style (all food on the table) and let them choose what food goes on their plate.
Picky a night of the week where they choose what the meal is for everyone. You can offer this to your other kids as well to make it an inclusive experience.
Poor Appetite
Getting kids with poor appetite on a schedule is key to promoting appetite awareness, however, some kids are just not hardwired to feel hunger and fullness. This sense of bodily feelings and awareness is called introception. If your child struggles with introception working with specialist in this field can be helpful.
Here are a few strategies to help your child with poor appetite:
Offer food every 2-3 hours. If they are not interested in one of the meals or snacks, let them skip it/don’t force them to eat, but make it clear that food will not be offered for 2-3 hours.
Limit all intake of calories between meals and snacks by allowing water to be available. Sources of calories outside of food include drinks like soda, juice, and sweetened flavored water.
Discuss starting an appetite stimulant with your physician. If your feeling like you’ve tried everything, this is a great way to get a win under your belt before continuing.
Recognize other signs of hunger and teach them to your child. Examples: meltdowns, tired/cranky/angry, etc and vocalize that this mean that they are hungry.
If you feel like you’ve tried it all, even if you’ve tried most or all of these tips, consider reaching out to someone for additional support. It’s often helpful to have a third party look at the situation objectively to help identify where additional changes could be made and provide accountability.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, like these suggestions are just too far off or you don’t know where to start, remember, expanding your child’s diet is a process. Take small steps by looking at the suggestions and thinking about what is the smallest change you could make that would move you towards the goal? Your child is nuanced and creativity is key!
