Between 25% and 45% of typically developing children struggle with feeding at some point during childhood.1 For children who find mealtimes challenging, there are universal strategies that can support positive mealtime skills. Try these top tips if you have a ‘fussy eater’ at your table.
1. Pair New Foods with Familiar Foods
If your child loves ketchup but isn’t sure about broccoli, serve broccoli with a side of ketchup so your child can dip their broccoli.
2. Always Serve One Food Your Child Likes
You don’t want your child to dread coming to the table, so serve at least one food item at each meal that you know your child likes. Make sure they have the other foods being served as a part of the meal on their plate as well.
3. No Pressure, Except Positive Peer Pressure
Meal times should be relaxed, pressure free, and include mealtime role-models. Research shows that children are more likely to eat non-preferred and new foods if they see their parents and other children eat them. 2 3
4. Value Self-Feeding (Mess is Good!)
Most people prefer to be in control over what goes in their mouth; let your child feed themselves, and save clean-up for when the meal has ended.
5. Give Non-Preferred Foods Fun Names
A study tested whether fun names (like ‘Power Punch Broccoli’) made vegetables more appealing to primary school students. Answer: Yes.4
6. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
It can take a child 15 to 20 separate meals seeing a new food before being ready to eat the new food; so keep offering non-preferred foods without pressure.
7. Don’t Measure Nutrition by the Meal
Look at what your child eats across a week to help decide if they are eating a balanced diet.
8. Food Play is Important (Mess is Good!)
Children need to play with and explore their food to learn how to eat; messy food play is a vital part of the learning process, encourage it!
9. Food Prep is Fun – Give Children a Way to Help
The more your child touches and helps prepare foods, the more likely they are to eat the food later.
10. Make Mealtimes a Positive, Social Experience
Eat as a family and turn off screens and other distractions.
Many children are able to move beyond fussy eating through supportive family meals involving the above strategies. However, some children’s fussy or selective eating is underpinned by a specific difficulty or developmental difference, and these children need specialist support with feeding and mealtimes. If your child’s fussy eating is not improving with the implementation of universal strategies, please get in touch. Feeding therapy helps support children to develop positive mealtime skills and decreases mealtime stress for both parents and children.
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- Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists ↩︎
- Haire-Joshu D, Elliott MB, Caito NM, Hessler K, Nanney MS, Hale N, Boehmer TK, Kreuter M, Brownson RC. High 5 for Kids: the impact of a home visiting program on fruit and vegetable intake of parents and their preschool children. Prev Med. 2008 Jul;47(1):77-82. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2008.03.016. Epub 2008 Apr 9. PMID: 18486203; PMCID: PMC3607447. ↩︎
- Influence of Screen-Based Peer Modeling on Preschool Children’s Vegetable Consumption and Preferences Staiano, Amanda E. et al. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 48, Issue 5, 331 – 335.e1 ↩︎
- Musher-Eizenman DR, Oehlhof MW, Young KM, Hauser JC, Galliger C, Sommer A. Emerald dragon bites vs veggie beans: Fun food names increase children’s consumption of novel healthy foods. J Early Child Res. 2011 Oct 1;9(3):191-195. doi: 10.1177/1476718X10366729. PMID: 26257583; PMCID: PMC4527653. ↩︎