Do you struggle with a fussy eater?
Here are 15 ways to manage calmer family mealtimes, support a healthy, more varied
diet and reduce stress around your child’s eating habits.
Offer small portions and add more if it's well received, rather than overwhelm your child with a big plate. Measure 1 serving of carbohydrate (rice, pasta, potato etc) as roughly equivalent to your child’s clenched fist, 1 serving of protein as equivalent to the area of their palm and 1 serving of fruit/vegetables equivalent to the area of 2 palms. Carbs are the main food group, then protein/fats, followed by fruit/veg.
Keep your meal timings for breakfast, lunch and dinner fairly consistent, as this will help anchor your child’s body clock and build a learned appetite.
Keep mid-morning/afternoon snacks small, so your child isn’t filling up ahead of mealtimes i.e. a handful of fruit/dried fruit, some veg sticks, an oatcake/cracker or small piece of cheese.
If your child refuses to be spoon-fed, try loading up a spoon for them to self-feed or use things like crudités (cucumber, carrot, pepper sticks) or breadsticks to load up with something more pureed like humous, fish paste (blend tinned salmon with cream cheese) or mashed avocado etc. For finger food ideas, try 'The Baby Led Weaning Cookbook' or 'River Cottage Baby & Toddler Cookbook’.
Role-play eating with a spoon, self-feeding, cooking and preparing food. Visit supermarkets and fruit & veg shops.
Sit down with your child at mealtimes and share a little food with them where you can. If a food is rejected, model eating it for them instead, and talk about how it tastes, the texture, the colour etc. Don’t pressurise your child to eat. If food is refused and it’s felt like a stressful mealtime, make sure you do something playful/light-hearted together afterwards to move on and reconnect again.
Sometimes offering a toy to play with can relax a child and then they may be more receptive to being fed, or you could try reading a book at the table. Avoid TV to coax your child into eating.
Offer ‘safe’ foods with every meal, perhaps alongside something new or more easily refused, but variety at this stage is less important. If you’re repeating meals but they’re getting something from different food groups across the day, that’s a good place to start. Frequent repetition is the key to accepting new foods.
Most fruit and veg are quite low in calories, so offer foods that are higher in calories/carbs first if your child seems to be eating very little at mealtimes compared to others, or if there are weight concerns.
Food chaining is a great way to introduce new foods based on past successful eating experiences. For example with sweet or white potato: mash with grated cheese & butter, roast whole to suck from the shell, roast as chips or wedges or mix mash with homemade tomato sauce. With pasta, for example, experiment with different shapes (tubes to pick up, big shells loaded with sauce, spaghetti in a pile to eat with fingers, tiny baby pasta shapes mixed with puree for a softer texture etc). If tomato sauce is ‘safe’, blend in a little of another vegetable i.e. carrot, pepper or courgette. Start small and build it up.
Offering an oatcake/some wholegrain toast (spread with avocado, nut butter, humous etc) or some yoghurt (option to thicken with a little readybrek if they haven’t eaten any of the main meal etc) can bulk up a meal if other foods are rejected.
Try not to worry if a meal is missed though – review the day of sustenance as a whole.
Limit milk to 2 servings up to 300-350ml from 18 months – too much milk fills small tummies with extra calories. Give semi-skimmed milk as a drink from 2 years+.
Make a platter of 3-4 different vegetables or fruits and ask which one they’d like to choose. Build up to asking them to choose 2 types. Model this too so you make a choice – sometimes children like the control of choosing something and putting it on their plate themselves. Cover the plate, refrigerate it and bring it out the next day to avoid waste and build more repetition.
Use an aeroplane-style plate that’s divided up – toddlers and young children are often happier when they can see each part of their meal.
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