Get them involved.
Get out the craft supplies and help your kids design and make their own placements, a table centerpiece, or napkin holders. Make it a monthly routine, perhaps decorating the table for each holiday.
Personalize it.
Purchase a dinner plate set decorated with your child’s current favorite TV or movie character. Or take them to the store and let them choose their own dishes, even if they don’t match your set.
Get creative with presentation.
Your child’s plate doesn’t always have to look the same – with a pile of each different type of food neatly arranged. You can string beans or noodles around the edge of the plate. Try alternating veggies, meat and grain in mini-piles or stripes all over the plate, or combine them to make a design. Get creative when you’re dishing out the next meal and see what happens!
Make an irresistible plate.
Combine fun names and interesting presentations to make a meal irresistible. Stand up broccoli pieces in a bed of mashed potatoes and sprinkle on bits of meat to make an edible treat: “Dinner Forestville.”
Try something different.
Try an unusual configuration of a usual food. Instead of spaghetti with meatballs serve one mega-meatball or lots of mini-meatballs. Cut a carrot in a very long, skinny strip from one end of the carrot to the other, and instead of apple pieces make long spirals using a potato peeler.
Let them dip it.
Kids love foods they can pick up by hand and dip – so anything that comes with a sauce can be served separately with the sauce in a bowl. Fruit in mashed cottage cheese or yogurt, apples in peanut butter, veggies in ranch dressing, or chicken pieces or beef cubes in marinara sauce are all fun to eat.
When you make mealtime more fun your picky eater just might become a lot less picky!
This article contains ideas from The No-Cry Picky Eater Solution: Gentle Ways to Encourage Your Child to Eat-and Eat Healthy by Elizabeth Pantley. (McGraw-Hill, 2011)
Elizabeth Pantley is a mother of four, grandmother, and author of the bestselling book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution plus 8 other books in the No-Cry Solution Series which helps Moms and Dads through all key stages of parenting. Visit her at nocrysolution.com
