Getting Your Toddler To Eat

Stepping away from the sleep-related posts, I’d love to take a minute to discuss another super frustrating parenting topic- food!  If you have a toddler, you’ve certainly experienced a refusal to eat the meal you’ve prepared.  You both start to get frustrated and eventually you break down and offer them whatever they’re willing to eat, since it’s better than them not eating at all. Or maybe you stick to your guns and refuse to offer up their request but are left worrying about their nutrition and hunger. You don’t want your child to go hungry but you also don’t want to keep giving in and letting them only eat foods that have no nutritional value.

Too much pressure on a toddler to eat this and not eat that can actually set up a resentment towards mealtimes and a bad relationship with food in general that can last well past their toddler years. So what’s the solution here? Well, I’m not a nutritionist but I can share some things I’ve learned from my mentor.  And she actually has a great program called Food Sense by the way.

1. Know Your Role.  As parents, we tend to see ourselves as the authority figure in the family, but let’s be real for a minute, because when it comes to eating, our ability to enforce the law is limited. We can’t actually force our kids to eat anything they don’t want to, so in the end, they’re the ones with the power here. Your role as the parent isn’t to decide how much of what food your child will eat.You are in charge of purchasing food, preparing meals, and scheduling times for them to eat. How much of it they eat is something you should leave up to your child.

2. Schedule Meal and Snack Times. Toddlers are in that strange growth phase where they’re high-output machines with small fuel tanks,by which I mean they have the energy levels of the Tasmanian Devil, but their tummies are still too small to hold enough food to keep them feeling full for long. So I like to offer 3 meals with a small snack in between.  Don’t let them go too long without eating or they are liable to get hangry! You do need to be diligent that there aren’t more snacks offered in addition to this. Too many snacks lead to no appetite for the actual meals that you prepare.

3. Offer Choices. For each meal and snack, I suggest you offer no less than three choices and make sure that they like at least one of them. Hold on! Just hear me out. I’m not suggesting you cook three separate meals every two hours. These choices can be small and simple, just as long as they’re reasonably healthy and have some variety to them. At breakfast, you might put out some peanut butter toast, some sliced banana, and some cheese.Let your little one know that those are the options and they can eat as much or as little as they want of whatever’s in front of them but there will be no other options brought out.  Trust me,they can make it a couple hours until the next snack/meal time.  And also trust me, they won’t starve if they go to bed a little hungry!  My 2 year old has gone to bed many nights after stubbornly eating very little for dinner.

4. Let Your Child Take it From There. Now that you’ve set up a schedule and provided your little one with some options, the rest is up to them. If they decide to eat all of their pasta and none of the veggies, you’ve got to be cool with it. If they eat all of the salad and only one bite of anything else, you’re going to be cool with that too. If they want to put their mashed potatoes on top of their broccoli and eat it with chopsticks, that’s their prerogative. Giving them control over what they eat is going to take a huge amount of stress off of everyone at the table, and it creates a much more positive association with mealtimes and food in general.

5. Be Repetitive. Toddlers have the uncanny ability to make judgments on foods before they’ve even put them near their mouths. Sometimes,they can tell if they like something just by the sound of the word, right? “Asparagus?You mean that vegetable I’ve never tasted, never smelled, never laid eyes on,and never even heard of prior to this very moment? Don’t like it.” Toddlers rarely take to a new food until they’ve gotten familiar with it, first through their eyes, then through smell. It’s not until they’ve developed a level of comfort with it being in front of them that they’re likely to give it a taste,so don’t give up on anything until you’ve presented it at the table at least five times or more. Even if your toddler seems repulsed by it at first, it may just take a little getting used to until they’re willing to take it for a spin.

6. Set an Example. If you’re not serious about food, chances are your toddler won’t be either. I’m not just talking about nutrition here, but about the whole relationship your family has with the preparation and enjoyment of food. If you take the time and make the effort to cook healthy, delicious meals, and make it a priority to enjoy time together, as a family, at the table, that positive vibe is going to shine all over everything food-related in your home.

7. Avoid Negative Labels. I think this is something that we as adults need to embrace as well. We tend to look at foods as “good” or “bad”foods, and which category they fall into is determined almost entirely by their current status. But most dietitians will tell you that most foods can be reasonably healthy, or at least not harmful, if eaten in moderation. Likewise,any food can be unhealthy if you don’t eat anything else. These all-kale diets may help you lose a few pounds, but they’re not providing anyone with adequate nutrition. But more than that, if your kids see you refusing to eat certain foods because they “make you fat” or “aren’t good for you,” they’re likely to associate negative feelings towards food as a whole, and shy away from trying anything unfamiliar.

So the important takeaways here, in case you didn’t have time to read the whole thing, are to set and adhere to a schedule, be patient while your little one’s getting accustomed to the unfamiliar, be predictable and repetitive, lead by example, and create positive associations instead of negative ones. All of which is advice I give my clients about their babies’sleep on pretty much a daily basis, so really, who says we’re drifting out of our lane here? And remember that there will be periods where your toddler has a ferocious appetite and other periods where they may not be growing as much and their appetite is much smaller.  That’s okay!  The same rules apply, whether it’seating or sleeping. It’s easier and more effective to lead them where we want them to go, rather than forcing them.

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