How to improve your child’s mealtime experience and increase food repertoire….
If you have ever had young kids, you have likely experienced the chore of trying to get them to try new things or to just finish a meal. Or you’ve worked all day, come home and made a meal that everyone complains about. It is so defeating! We then start restricting our family meals to things our kids will eat. Even worse, we short order cook different things for everyone. Not ideal! It is so hard to understand how meals can be so enjoyable to adults but so painstaking for kids!
I learned through training and experience as an occupational therapist (OT), that eating is a complicated aspect of development. We think it should just be an easy, desirable task. Yet, so many factors influence how kids learn to eat and then to love different foods. It definitely involves more steps developmentally than our culture appreciates or that we think about on a regular basis. It makes so much sense that most kids would live on chicken nuggets and mac and cheese if we would let them!
So, this got me thinking about how we all need a few tricks in our back pocket to help our kids learn to love food! Most kids are not born ready to eat and love Brussel sprouts and a good steak. They need positive mealtime experiences (and obviously developmentally appropriate foods) to learn to love these foods and mealtimes.
Here are a few of our favorite go to kid friendly meal tips. Nothing is rocket science here, but maybe there are a few reminders and hopefully a new idea or two to try.
Serve Meals Family Style
This sounds like a pretty obvious kid friendly meal tip. Props to the many families who do eat this way already. Family style is setting all food out in dishes on the table with serving spoons, and allowing kids who are old enough to scoop their own food. Allowing them ownership over scooping their servings gives a feeling of control that we know kids love. If they are too young to scoop on their own, watching siblings and other family members try things is great exposure and modeling for future good eaters!
My daughter (cooked veggies aren’t her thing) tried this roasted broccoli recipe without batting an eye, when it was served family style. She loved using the tongs to select her pieces! When I first introduce a new dish, I always try to remember to serve family style for best results….Try it with this Lemon Basil Orzo with Sundried Tomato recipe. Even if your child doesn’t try it, by being visually exposed, they are one step closer by putting it on the plate and considering it. This is a huge step in the eating process.
Lemon Basil Orzo with Sundried Tomatoes
Simple Roasted Broccoli
Explore Foods Together
Pickle’s Party Mix
Taking kids to the grocery store can be hard work. However, allowing them the chance to select foods to try could be a game changer. It could be walking down the cereal aisle and allowing your child to select one new brand or type to try. Allow them to investigate it or make a simple recipe with it on their own. (Thiis how this recipe for Pickle’s Party Mix came to be).
Or peruse through the produce section and pick out a new veggie or fruit that looks interesting. Go home and read about it online and explore the sensory properties of it. Cut it open with your child, then smell, touch, and discover it together.
Even if your kids don’t eat the new thing right away, you are creating curious eaters when you explore and encourage them to learn about food.
Change up the Scenery!
Turkey Teriyaki Stir Fry
Does your child ever refuse to eat a specific dish at home, but gobble it up when at a friend’s house? My kids are always more flexible and curious eaters away from home, when the environment is different. Often, once they try something in a new place, they are more willing to give it a go at home.
Not that we can go out to eat or on vacation or to the neighbor’s house for dinner each night. But taking advantage of those opportunities by noticing what might be a recipe to duplicate once back at home is huge.
Beth’s family was visiting us in Colorado, and I made this Turkey Teriyaki Stirfry. Her kids devoured it and it is now a favorite dish for them at home.
You can also vary the mealtime scenery in your own home by making an effort to change up your dining location. Eat in the dining room on occasion or outside when trying a new dish with your family. When my kids were younger, we would do lunch picnics on a blanket inside the house on occasion to change things up. They loved it and were much more flexible eaters!
Engage Kids in the Cooking Process
One of the most important reasons to cook with your kids is to spend that quality time. It is also such a great opportunity to expose them to all of the sensory experiences of food without imminent pressure to eat it! Check out this post on some of our Cooking with Kids ideas.
5 Great Cooking With Kids Ideas: Check out this recent post for ideas of engaging kids in food and the cooking process!
Make Adult Food Kid-Friendly
Here are some easy ways to adapt what you are eating to make it more kid friendly. When I am flexible to do these things, my kids are as well!
Change the Sensory Properties
You can easily change sensory properties of anything you are eating to be more appetizing and/or less overwhelming. For example, cut new vegetables into small pieces so visually it is more manageable. Place small pieces of Roasted Brussel sprouts or asparagus between two crackers to give the veggie a crunchy and appealing texture. Start by offering pieces of broccoli stalks vs. the entire crown. Or a super easy go to is to make shapes with breads, pancakes, or lunch meats using cookie cutters.
Bring in Reinforcements
There are so many great and easy tools you can use to encourage your kids to try small bites of new foods. Use toothpicks (check out these fun animal picks on Amazon) to introduce tiny sized samples of a food you are introducing. Try not to worry about volume for these introductions, its exposure that is important at first. Serve these cute little samples along side preferred foods that your child already knows or as an experimental “snack” while you are cooking.
One of my other favorite ideas is serving small bites of new foods in ice cube trays or on these fun Dinner Winner Plates. Again, small pieces of new foods are less overwhelming. Simply put small bites from the meal in each section and then a “prize” of preferred food at the end. It is amazing what these simple tools can do to change the vibe of a meal.
Separate the Ingredients
It sounds so simple, but this strategy works! Let’s say for example that you are making this Chicken Fajita Bowl or these Greek Chicken Bowls. As adults, we like the ingredients piled on top of one another, but it could be a turn off to a kid. Simply make separate sections for the rice, the protein, and the veggies. They may eat mostly the rice or the chicken, but they may be more likely to try each ingredient separately. The same is true for pasta dishes with different sauce or toppings. Serving noodles separate, for example in this Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto dish or Chicken Marsala, is a way to make mealtime more manageable for kids.
Kid Friendly Mealtime Conversation
Create a fun family mealtime experience by staying connected with them. You can do this by engaging your kids in topics they are interested in over a meal. This could be as easy as talking about everyone’s best and worst part of the day or the funniest thing that happened that day, for example.
One of my son’s favorite mealtime games was “carnivore/ herbivore/ omnivore”. We used a deck of animal cards at the table. When a carnivore was drawn from the stack, we all had to eat a piece of meat, herbivore, a veggie and omnivore, anything we wanted. This game got us through many meals in his younger years! Again, this idea sounds simple, but it can be a way to change the mealtime vibe in a huge way. It is no surprise kids (just like adults) are most flexible to try new things when they are relaxed.
Final Thoughts on these Kid Friendly Meal Tips
Obviously, all of these ideas would take planning and effort and aren’t meant to be an every day thing. But if you are stuck in a rut with your young eaters, maybe one of these ideas could be the breakthrough you need.
The ideas in this post were intended for children with typically developing feeding skills. If your child has an identified feeding difficulty, these tips could be supportive, however, you should seek advice from your child’s feeding therapist for individualized strategies suited and safe for him or her.
If you have young kids, always defer to developmental guidelines for age appropriate and safe introduction of foods.
Thanks to Melanie Hunt, one of my favorite OTs and people in this world, for her collaboration on narrowing down this list to the most useful mealtime tools for most families.
XOXO –
