Picky eaters

Hi there
Any advice and ideas for my b/g twins? They are 3. What they will eat is so limited. I find I am scared or too tired to try new things. Here's what they eat for dinner. Butter noodles, fish sticks- maybe, Mac n cheese. Some fruits. Lunchables. I know they should be eating what we eat but they don't and there is a big gap between our two dinners. I need more ideas. Thanks

 

I don't fight the food fight with my kids. I offer them the same food we're eating, if they don't want it, they don't have to eat it. They know that nothing else is coming either. And there are no snacks after dinner before bed. All you can do is offer them the food. They have to decide what they eat.

 

I do this too, but I make sure there is at least one thing on their plate that I know they will eat. I also make them take one bite before they decide they don't like it.

 

I recommend looking into Ellyn Satter's books and website. I like Child of Mine, Feeding With Love and Good Sense.

 

I don't fight food fights with my kids either, but we're somewhere in between the ideal of them eating exactly what we eat and the nightmare of them eating only Lunchables and mac-n-cheese. DH and I eat a lot of salads and spicy food and neither of my kids is excited about lettuce or chile peppers. So I make one main meal that includes add ons for the grown ups and add ons for the kids. For example, last night I made a spicy fish curry and served it over rice for DH and I. The girls had fish, buttered rice, and most of the vegetables that went into the curry. It was all the same ingredients DH and I ate but everything was served separately and not in a curry sauce.

Anyway, the only way to turn your picky eaters into better eaters is to try, try again, and keep trying. Plan meals on weekends and do some of your cooking in advance. That way you won't be too tired to provide a healthy meal. Then pick a day and start offering the same meal you eat, and like Leighann said, make sure there's at least one thing on their plate you know they'll eat. Every night it will get a little easier.

Edited to add: you can take simple steps now to replace some of the less healthy or more "kid only" food. Substitute baked fish filets for fish sticks, brown rice with cheese and butter mixed in instead of macaroni and cheese, a baked ham served with canned pumpkin instead of Lunchables. The most important thing, though, is you have to model the eating habits you want your kids to have. If you eat healthy and well balanced meals WITH them, they're much more likely to make the switch easily.

 

I started off doing this (following Ellyn Satter's book), but it very quickly turned into serving a "side dish" of plain pasta/noodles or rice with nearly EVERY meal, because those are the only things I know they will eat! Around age 4 Amy started getting marginally better and would usually at least taste a couple of new things -- plus she started actually liking a couple of random things like salmon and rare beef -- but Sarah is still incredibly picky. We all eat together nearly every night, and DH and I model good eating habits, but the kids just sit there and eat plain carbs, fruit, and a couple of raw veggies.

Finally, after a couple of years of this, we instituted a rule that they have to try (just one bite) at least one thing they don't normally eat if they want dessert. The downside is that now they have dessert after nearly every dinner, which I had been hoping to avoid. But it's something simple like a small scoop of ice cream or a cookie. The up side is that at least they are trying things. So far it hasn't led to any great breakthroughs for Sarah, but she can now take a tiny bite of something unfamiliar without literally gagging.

So my advice, if you want to take advice from someone who has pretty much failed on this issue so far, is start early to at least make them taste things. Leaving it totally up to them (as Ellyn Satter recommends) may work if you're strong enough to let them go hungry if they refuse to eat what you're serving -- I wasn't.