My 8 year old has been in a picky eating phase for some time now.
I use the term “phase” in the hopes that, through the power of words, it will somehow magically end.
Eh. Not so much.
This little phase has lasted… oh, going on 2 years now. Lately it’s getting ridiculous.
I don’t know exactly when it began, because during my pregnancy and first few months I’m in a kind of free floating fog of nausea, sleep deprivation and general crankiness. I just know that it needs to stop.
Today I asked her to make a list of the foods she doesn’t like.
Be careful what you ask for!
p.s. Please don’t judge her punctuation too harshly. She is, after all, only 8 and seems to have been infected with that heavy use of the apostrophe disease so many native Georgians have. We’re working on it ok?!
Ilana’s List of Thing’s I Dont Like To Eat
- Shrimp
- Brocli
- Carrot’s
- Bean’s
- Rice.
- Vegtable’s
- Corn
- Tomato’s
- Hash Brown’s
- Spinach
- Caulflower
Yikes.
I have a feeling that several of those items appear simply because they were what we had for dinner (rice, shrimp, “brocli” and “caulflower”). We also had carrots, and I pointed out that it didn’t make the list, to which she replied:
“I like carrots. Raw.”
I simply don’t know how the child survives because most days she subsists on a diet of chewing gum and her own spit.
Any thoughts on what to do with an 8 year old going through a picky phase?
Previously when a child tried to be picky I didn’t make a big deal out of it, and just insisted that they take ONE bite of the offensive food. I also don’t allow them to say negative things about the food before saying something kind.
For instance, they can tell me:
“Thanks for dinner mom. Asparagus with mushroom sauce isn’t my favorite dish, though I do appreciate the mashed potatoes.“
The other kids aren’t picky (except for maybe one or two foods each) so this tactic has worked well for me.
I know I need to get a little tougher with her though. She eats too much toast, and also has a sweet tooth. Maybe she needs fewer carbs?
What say you?
My daughter was very picky. I never found anything that worked. Now that she’s grown up, she has branched out a lot. Try to focus on what she WILL eat instead of what she won’t eat. For instance, when my daughter was going to school, she didn’t like sandwiches, but she did like deli meat. So, I would make “turkey rolls,” just rolled up slices of turkey with a toothpick stuck through them. And she would eat starfruit, so I would peel and cut it in slices. Whatever works!!
My daughter is three, and whenever she starts to get “picky”, we respond with the same strategy every time. (Please note first that we do allow a couple of “no-thank-you’s”, such as potato salad in her case. No more than one or two per person. Mine is canned mushrooms. Yuck.) If I make something for breakfast and she doesn’t want it, that’s fine. We NEVER force her to eat, but we also NEVER force her to go hungry. We put the meal in the fridge and at the next meal, that’s what she can have. We do not threaten, bribe, beg, or get angry, we simply offer her the same thing until she eats it. When she is hungry… she eats it. It’s not a big power struggle, she always has food available, nobody is upset, it works beautifully. Remember, we are the parents and it is our job to provide nutritious foods. After once or twice of her being “full” instead of eating something, she usually gives it an honest try and finds that she likes it.
Everybody is happy!
Thanks for the tips! You said: “We put the meal in the fridge and at the next meal, that’s what she can have.”
Unfortunately, that’s almost impossible to enforce with a much older child. It’s easier with a little one. But I like the idea of it! My strategy now is to not allow inbetween meal snacking. I think she’s filling up on snacks and henceforth has no appetite at mealtimes.
I hope cutting out the snacking helps.
The other huge tip is to have the kids help prepare the food (and grow it, if you have a garden!!!). Kids are usually much more open to new foods if they have helped a cheerful mom make something delicious out of it.
The other thing that I forgot to mention that I know families with older children do is to simply NOT buy whatever the kids want. If PB&J is all they want, the mom makes sure there isn’t any peanut-butter and jelly in the house. Obviously, you can’t do that with every single ingredient, such as the bread, but it can help cut down on requests for their “favorites”. Once they have been broken out of the rut they’ve been in, you can reintroduce things on a limited basis. We have to be careful not to do PB&J very often, or else it becomes the only thing she wants for lunch.
I’m not quite clear on what you mean about not being able to “enforce” food rules with an older child. I know many families that do and they are happy and healthy. If your kids go out of the home for school, maybe that’s what you mean (?). You said you’ve made a no-snacking rule, so I’m under the impression that she is there with you… I guess I’m missing something.
My brother was a notoriously picky eater. My mom used to put whatever she made everyone else for dinner in front of him. If he ate it, great! If he didn’t, oh well. She figured if he was hungry, he would eat. And he did! Some things he outright refused to eat (and still does as an adult), but he never suffered from malnutrition, despite cutting out several vegetables. When he got older he gradually began to try add a few “never” foods, but that was at his wife’s insistence! I have a dear friend who is ridiculously picky, but she gets by in life just fine. Some people just are. You may have to resign yourself as much as you may hate it!