How to deal with Picky Eaters

If you have picky eaters it can be tough to get them to eat the meals you prepare which is extremely frustrating as a mom since you have taken at least 20-30 minutes to prepare the food after you are already exhausted from the day and now your kids are sticking their tongues out or whining about how this is gross and they aren't going to eat.

So, what do we do?  We stop fighting and we succumb to the-mom is a short order line cook and makes 2-3 different meals each night so that we don't have to listen to

any more whining!

but yet again, we remain exhausted, frustrated, and guilty that our children are not getting the nutrients they need into their body.

After many years of doing this, I have come up with a few solutions that have worked for my family. 

1.  De-constructed night: this is usually some sort of bowl or taco night where I have rice, taco shells, or a bed of romaine lettuce as the base in a bowl.  I then cut up different ingredients and place them out on a platter (the more color, the better) and let them fill it with any of the items they want.  The key with this is, do NOT tell them that they need to add anything specific.  I have noticed that in time they will begin to try more items and add them to their bowls. 
(pic above is a deconstructed sushi bowl that they were able to place over their rice)

2. Something familiar on their plate:  Most of our dinners consist of a salad and vegetable, some sort of whole grain or potato, and then some meat on our plates.  I always make sure to place everything that we, the parents, have on our plates and I do ask that my children taste everything on their plate.  If they don't like it, they are not required to continue to eat it, but they must taste everything; even if they KNOW they don't like it.  I then will also place some fruit, yogurt, or sometimes even something like goldfish on their plates (when they were younger), so that they had a couple of things that I knew they really loved.  This allowed for less grumbling at the dinner table and also made sure that they had enough in their bellies if they didn't eat the other items.

3. A favorite meal:  I always try to make one meal each week one that they love!  Now with three kids, and varying tastes, this doesn't always work out where they all get a meal they love; but for the most part they don't mind eating something that their siblings love so it works out.  Some of the famous go-to's in our house are Spaghetti and meatballs, homemade chicken tenders with rice and roasted broccoli, tacos, mac & cheese, or even grabbing their favorite dinner out.  So you can guarantee one of these meals will be on our weekly plan each and every week.

4.  Help in the kitchen:  This truly does work and is so funny to me.  My daughter loves green beans, and I think this has to do with this was one of the first things she helped me in the kitchen with, she would snap them for me.  Another son, loves asparagus and yet again, he used to snap the bottoms off of these before I would roast them.  The more they can help in the kitchen the more likely they will be willing to try what has been set before them; and if you are able to grow those items in your back yard even better.  We have a growing system that we use to grow greens on our back porch.

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Transcript

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Hi, I'd like to welcome you to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach and the founder of formfit. a community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise Healthy Families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information and tactics you need to help raise healthy humans. episode eight, picky eaters. Today I'm hoping to provide you all with some tips that over the years I have been able to work through with my children to help them enjoy dinner time, we have actually run the gamut with our children. My first was a very picky eater when he was little my second and third or much better when they were younger, but have gotten my actually my third has gotten pickier as she's gotten older rather than opposite. So with three we have dealt with situations where they won't eat, and they complain about what's being served for dinner. And I can understand it can be extremely frustrating as a mom, since you've taken at least 20 to 30 minutes to prepare your food after already usually that time of day is an exhausting time of day. And now you've placed dinner on the table. And your kids are sticking out their tongues or whining about how gross it is. And as they get older, they actually say this is gross, and complaining that they're not going to eat it or having the battle with them about you know what they need to eat, and you need to try everything on your plate. So it can be really difficult. And I myself have been through this situation where I have hit decision fatigue, and I am tired of dealing with the complaining, I'm exhausted I The last thing I want to do is sit down at dinner and listen to them complain. So what do we do as moms many times we succumb to the mom is a short order line cook and makes two to three different meals each night so that we don't have to listen to them wine. But then we get frustrated and guilty feel the guilt that mom guilt that always enters that our children are not getting the nutrients they need in their body. And they're eating the packaged processed foods again. And that can be frustrating. And it's this endless cycle that continues to occur night after night because we're too tired to put up with the whining. So what I have done, I'm going to provide you with four tips. And hopefully you can implement some of them. And if you have ideas, I definitely want to hear from you as well. What ideas you have. So the first thing is working with them, trying to determine what their favorite meal is. So many of them you know, tacos are a great option spaghetti and meatballs. Chicken, my daughter is sitting here with me, chicken tenders things like that. And just make it family you know a family meal. So instead of getting the packaged chicken tenders, maybe you make homemade chicken tenders or same thing with mac and cheese. Instead of buying packaged mac and cheese make homemade mac and cheese and one that I do which is a very easy simple recipe. If you're interested in making it yourself. It's not where you have to bake it or anything. It is just cook a pot of pasta. When that pasta is cooked, empty the water plays everything back in the pot. Add I've usually do a tablespoon, maybe two tablespoons of butter. I'm thinking about a quarter cup of milk and then eight ounces of cheddar cheese and I just mix it all together. And there's your mac and cheese very, very simple. So those are what I would recommend for a favorite meal. And I have my daughter here to recommend a couple of her favorite meals that maybe your children will like as well. So the first thing is breaded chicken. Okay, so with the breaded chicken, do you know how we make that okay so we take Usually I like to do panko but you could do bread crumbs. And honestly I made them the other day with almond flour. And they were really good. So you just take any one of those about a half a cup, I'm thinking of bread crumbs, maybe a little bit more depending on how many chicken tenders you're making, and I buy the tenders from the grocery store. And then I usually put some salt and pepper and garlic powder, and maybe a little bit of oregano in with the bread crumbs and mix them all up. And then you can do an egg wash before so you would say like take an egg and mix it and then dip the chicken in to the egg wash and then dip them into the breadcrumbs. And then I usually cook them at 400 for about 15 minutes depending on how thick my chicken tenders are. So when we have that, what do you usually like to have with it? I like green beans. Yep, she loves green beans. And then what else do we like? We only have like, do we usually like you like rice with it? Yeah. So they like to have more like a rice pilaf. You like that or an orzo? You all like orzo as well. Right. Okay. And then the second thing, what is the second thing you like? The second thing I like is a BLT. Okay, BLT or grilled cheese grilled cheese sandwich. So with the BLT or grilled cheese sandwich, this is a great one as well to have for a family dinner night. And what I like to do is, in the winter months, I do soups, and in the summer months, I do salads. So we'll always have either a grilled cheese sandwich or a BLT, and then they get their veggie through the soup or salad. And that's always a nice dish that all the kids enjoy, and they do actually eat the salad. So that would be what I would start with is a favorite meal. The second thing that I do is a deconstructed night. And this is usually a fun one, where you set out all the ingredients on a platter, and allow your children to choose what they want to put in the dish. So it's usually a bowl that I'll make. So thinking like a taco bowl or a Greek bowl, we're all have the tacos already there for them. Or they could have a bed of lettuce or a bed of rice. And then I cut up the different ingredients placed them all out on a platter and thinking, what do we usually have, so if there was a taco night, we would do either ground beef or ground chicken. I always tried to add some kind of beans. So black beans or pinto beans. And then for vegetables, we'll have like tomatoes and or sometimes have like jalapenos, and like lettuce, onion, red onions, and cheese and cheese and avocado, and anything else sour cream, guacamole, those would be your toppings. And it would be on a better either. I can't remember if I mentioned this rice or lettuce, and then they get to pick what they put on the bowl. And this is a time where you don't say anything. You let them choose what they want. So my daughter usually will have What do you usually put in your bowl? I normally put in like everything except for the cream cheese. And guacamole, sour cream, sour cream and guacamole. No, you'd like guacamole? Well, I do but not on top of you don't like it on top. Okay. So that is usually what we like to do. And then they get to pick what they're putting on top. And one of the biggest things that I've noticed about picky eaters, is they want to be in control. So if you provide them that control, they are more willing to try new things. In the beginning my daughter only had like the protein and the cheese, right? That was pretty much it. Although you've always been good with avocados and lettuce. So she would have that and now she's gotten to where she'll try more stuff. She really likes cilantro. And jalapenos are a little still hot for you, right? No, you'd like them. Okay? Just like if you just like three of them, three of them on top of your tacos. Okay, so those are two ways that we try to make it work in our household with them. Oh, another thing I forgot to mention was boards we also during deconstructed night we can also do boards. I have a cookbook here it is called beautiful boards and it's 50 amazing stack boards for any occasion by Meghan brown and she is known as the Baker mama on Instagram. And this is a fun one because you can have a night of like a charcuterie board with cheeses and meats and vegetables. And then they have some really yummy ones. Well, that's a that's not a healthy one. This is a healthy night. That's a movie night board that she's looking at. But they have beautiful pictures. They've got great ideas, they do a pancake board in the morning with pancakes and eggs, and bacon and fruit, bananas, and raspberries and strawberries and blueberries, eggs and bacon. That's what I said. So they have different fun options for them. And we've done these as a deconstructed night. They even have bright here a build your own Cobb salad board. So this is a great one, if you need ideas, you can go to her page on Instagram, she's got some beautiful boards, and ideas for different meals that you could have. And you can just make it healthy. And then they're again letting them be in control, they get to pick what they want to put on their plate. The third thing that we like to do is something familiar on their plate. And as my children have gotten older, I don't have to do this quite as much. But when they were little, this was something that I always did to help keep them from moaning and groaning, because what I noticed is when they would come out to dinner, and they'd look at the plate, they would say, oh, there's nothing on the plate plate I like. So what I would do is I would always have something on the plate they liked. So I'm going to take just a basic dinner that we would have in our house, and it'd be like pork tenderloin, sweet potatoes and roasted broccoli. And when they were younger, they may not have liked most of that stuff. So I would put some strawberries and a yogurt on their plate as well. So when they would come out and look at the plate, they immediately go to what they like. So I wouldn't hear gross, I wouldn't hear there's nothing I like, because they had the yogurt and the strawberries. And they knew that that was good. And then what we would do, they would, you know, obviously, they would usually eat the yogurt and strawberries first. And then I would say you just need to try everything on your plate. You don't have to eat it. But you have to try it. And they weren't getting it was not a separate meal from what we were getting. They got what I had on my plate and what my husband had on his plate, they got the same thing, they got the sweet potato, they got maybe not the full sweet, sweet potato, but they got some of the sweet potato, they got the roasted broccoli, they got the pork, and then they got things that they enjoyed. And they would have to try it because remember, they need to see something quite a few times before they get comfortable with trying it. And then there again, once they try it, they have to try it a few times before they start to enjoy it. So allowing them to first see it sit on the plate, and then they have to taste it. And then once they start to taste it over and over again, they'll usually start to enjoy it. So that is one thing that we do. And you know, you could also do goldfish, there were many times I would put a little container goldfish in the place of where we would have rice or something and I'd put rice beside the goldfish, something like that to give them the option. And then the last thing is to have them help in the kitchen. And this truly does work. So my daughter mentioned that she likes green beans. And what did you do when you were younger? So what I do is I help my mom make the green beans by snapping them. Okay, so you snap the ends off of them. Yeah. And then sometimes if they're big green beans, you snap them in half, right? Yeah. Is there anything else that you do for cooking? I'm putting her on the spot. I didn't warn her. I was gonna ask her this. Sometimes I will just help you make, like, just yesterday. We will not yesterday the day before that. I made something. It is asparagus and I did got bread. Okay, so you put the garlic bread in the oven and you snap the asparagus. And do you like asparagus? Yeah. Yeah, it's my second favorite vegetable to have on the plate other than green beans. Okay, so it goes green beans and spirits. And both of those are ones that you've always helped me snap right. Yep, yep. So that speaks volumes right there. So having them help in the kitchen, do the little things and you can even get them in the kitchen. One thing when she was even younger that I would do is if I would have broccoli say I was going to steam some broccoli is I would have her put The salt and pepper on whatever I was doing. And you know, they, when their fingers are little, it doesn't even matter, like they can just sprinkle a little bit on top and they feel like they're helping. So that's a great one as well. And then the other thing that we do that I feel like has helped with you all eating salads and trying more herbs, is we have a Tower Garden in our backyard. So we have a garden system, a growing system that we use to grow our lettuce and herbs. And are you willing to try things? What was one, what's one of your favorite herbs that you've tried? Probably the tries, you like the chives, the long ones and you like cilantro. So having something a growing system where they help to start to grow some of the herbs and you don't even need, you know, you can just put them in a small pot in the backyard. And then you know, they're more apt to taste it, especially what's fun for them is being able to go out there and just say, you can pick that and put it in, you know, you can try it. And that's always fun for them to be able to try it. I remember all of my children when we would put the different lettuces, we've got Bibb lettuce and romaine lettuce and field greens, they would try they would just pull them off and eat them because it was different, you know, it was something that they were able to just touch And eat, eat it right away. So those are the tips that I have for you in regards to picking eating. And my daughter was here to help with that as well. Hello. And is there anything you want to say? Like having them help with their picky eaters, okay, she didn't want to say anything. So having patience, just have patience with them and understand that this is their way of showing that they want to have control of themselves and allowing them opportunities to make some decisions for themselves in regards to the food that they're eating at the dinner table. As long as you're providing them healthy options, then they will start to be able to eat a little bit healthier. So I hope that helped. If you have any questions for me, feel free to reach out to me. Remember you can find us over at form fit mom community on Facebook and let us know there. What are some tips that you have for your picky eaters? Is there something that you do in your household that really works. Also, if you are really struggling with meal ideas, I offer some recipe ideas a five day meal plan, you can find that I will leave the show notes, letting you know where you can find that so you can try out our meal plans. And that is it. I hope you all have a wonderful day.