28/10/2025
Allowing children to help prepare meals and snacks and set the table, as far as appropriate, is so simple yet incredibly rewarding. They tend to thoroughly enjoy this, and it offers an opportunity to bond with you while practicing gross and fine motor skills and improving interest in different foods.
If your child displays picky eating:
✅️ Let them get involved in preparing the variety of foods you would like them to consume, and eat these foods yourself.
✅️ Try introducing new or less favoured foods at a time of day when they have the biggest appetite (but are not overly hungry) and are not tired or cranky. A feeding schedule often helps.
✅️ Include some food items that they enjoy alongside these new or less favoured foods.
✅️ Experiment with different food combinations, tastes, textures and methods of encouragement.
✅️ Minimize distractions during mealtimes.
Pack school meals and snacks in fun lunch boxes.
✅️ Continue to offer these less favoured foods, as over time, with repetition, they are often accepted.
✅️ As tricky as it can get, try to keep mealtimes positive and relaxed. Never force your child to eat. Sometimes refusal is temporary due to teething or simply the will to be independent.
❤️
