Picky Eaters: Dinnertime Action Plan

This final post of our picky eater series is a practical action plan. If you are looking at Supernanny Jo on the left wondering how hard it will be… I can tell you right now that it’s not going to be easy because it requires patience and consistency.  It also requires us parents to set aside our “feelings” and get on with well… actually parenting.  Whaaaaatttt? Yes, you heard me right. But first, if you haven’t read our series, check out our post on texture picky eaters, color picky eaters and solutions to picky eating.  Those posts will fill you in and give you a perspective on how we got here.

After a long demanding day, many parents are exhausted at the thought of the evening-time routine.  You might recognize it as homework, dinner, pick up time and baths… all before bed time.  You are tired from your job or from working in the house on laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and many more things that would take too long to list; you look at the clock and realize that you need to make something for dinner!  If you use a dinner planning service like The Six O’clock Scramble or The Fresh 20 and you had dinner planned, then you are in good shape.  For many of us, however, it’s a quick glance of our potential dinner list we wrote down before we went to the grocery store.  Either way, you get yourself in the kitchen and begin the task of making a nutritious meal for your family.  When dinner time rolls around, your kids are hungry, cranky (is it bed time yet?) and the complaints about I don’t want this but I wanted that have just begun.  Fantastic, you think to yourself.  Here, “I slaved in the kitchen and now they don’t want to eat what I’ve prepared.”

This parental “let-down” is very common.  The one where you prepare something for your family and are met with resistance, picky eater bias, and evening time crankiness.  Sound familiar?  If it doesn’t, please email me and let me know how on earth you keep it together so well; many of us would like to know.  If this sounds like something you experience from time to time, don’t worry; many parents feel rejected, unappreciated, and under recognized for their efforts in the kitchen.  To you I say, even Martha Stewart makes recipes people don’t care to eat.  It’s ok. While it may be easier said than done, we’ve all wondered what Supernanny would do if she came into our house during times we can’t control our kids or our feelings.

Perhaps you’ve been trying out ways to introduce new foods to your picky eaters and it doesn’t seem to be working.  Patience my friend, eventually it does get better.  How long is “eventually”?  It depends.  Here is what we’ve been doing at our house for the past 5 months and it’s working:

1. Plan out your dinners even if all you have is a rough draft.  One night I work on introducing a new food (or make something that it isn’t my kids’ favorite; like beans or meat) and the next night I serve something that is a sure hit: breakfast for dinner, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, baked fish “nuggets”…etc.  Why do I do that? So my dinnertime struggles, fights, and disappointments are short lived: a mere 24 hours.  On nights I serve something my kids don’t enjoy eating, my daughter is the first to ask: what are we having tomorrow? I tell her, and remind her that not every day can be breakfast for dinner (in a perfect world, I am sure it could be).
   
2. Set some rules.  You’ve heard the 3-bite-rule often but wonder what it might actually entail.  How exactly does the 3 bites rule work?  In my house, you must have 3 bites of what’s in your plate (including the veggies) and then you are excused from eating the rest.  That doesn’t mean that after 3 bites they get a reward or can have something else to eat (no chocolate milk either).  It only means that after 3 bites I will quit asking them to try/eat/chew what’s in their plate.  In addition, they must wait for the rest of us to finish our dinner before getting up from the table.  What happens when they refuse to eat?  Consequences.
   
3. Set clear consequences.  If my kids don’t eat 3 bites, they are sent to their rooms for the evening.  Plain and simple.  They are immediately excused from the table and they are to get their pjs on, brush their teeth and wait for me to get there and say good night.  It it easy? No.  For the first couple of months we heard a lot of crying, kicking, screaming and just when we thought we heard it all… we heard some more.  But, I set my foot down and reminded myself that God willing,  “tomorrow is another day.”  It only took a couple of weeks of being sent to their rooms for the evening (with much back and forth to & from table) for my kids to understand that a) I was serious and b) there were consequences.  Now, they might complain on the nights that the food isn’t their favorite but I remind them that they can go to their room or stay with us  by only eating 3 bites.  

What’s amazing is that now my children eat a wider variety of foods than ever before and the dinner time power struggle has ended.  Often times, it was only a resistance to food that wasn’t familiar or they thought they didn’t like.  After a few bites, they have even said out loud “this is good” and kept on eating.  It has been, and still is, difficult to choose to be the “mean” person.  Nobody likes to be put in that role, specially when I am correcting them through out the day while my husband is at work.  However, nothing a little snuggle time can’t fix later on.  It’s true.  Your children are not going to love you any less because you are the mean person at dinner time.  They will respect you more for walking up to the plate to actually parent.  Dont’ believe me? Ask nanny Jo, from Supernanny.