Actually, they’re not all that picky.

Things I do to encourage my kids to try new foods, without power struggles.

My kids don’t love leftovers. That’s fine, for now. I encourage leftovers with things I know they remember they like, and I figure we’ll work on it. So they eat a lot of grilled turkey-and-cheese sandwiches while I eat leftovers for lunch.

In spite of the monotony of their lunches, I would not categorize my kids as “picky” in the typical toddler/preschooler sense of “all she will eat is yellow foods!” (Chicken nuggets, applesauce, macaroni and cheese, toast, etc.)

It’s just that I prefer to choose my battles, and leftover brussels sprouts is a battle I’m unlikely ever to win.

However, freshly-roasted brussels sprouts are something I can put on my 3 year old’s plate without causing an instant tantrum. (Visible parsley, though…another story.) I clearly remember one time when she not only ate the 3 pieces I had put on her plate, but also asked for and ate seconds! Many vegetables have had good days like that with my Miryam.

Luke will even eat cold raw-vegetable salad if it’s off my fork and originally from my plate (sometimes). I didn’t even eat salad happily until I was in college!

I have a theory that precisely because I don’t constantly push new foods on them, my kids are at least halfway willing to try the new-to-them foods I cook and that my husband and I are obviously enjoying at dinner time.

Earlier this week, Justin made chicken pot pie for dinner. Carrots, peas, onions, mushrooms: all mixed together and each individually recognizable in their bowls.

Often, one or both kids will initially resist new foods, or brightly colored veggies they don’t remember if they liked last time or not.

With Luke (almost 2), it’s kind of a gamble. Either he’ll take a bite, or he won’t. I usually have to put something inoffensive-looking on his fork and wait for him to decide to take the bite. Shoving it into his mouth unfailingly results in him throwing things (or himself) on the floor. One of my go-to techniques to get that first bite in, is to tell him to “lick it like a lollipop,” and once there’s a taste on his tongue and no grimace, I say, in a surprised tone, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s pretty delicious!” Then usually he smiles and takes the whole bite willingly. And the rest of the bowl is history. I follow up with, “See, Mommy and Daddy don’t try to feed you gross things.”

Miryam (3.5yrs) requires a bit more creativity these days. She’ll get it in her head that she doesn’t like some particular thing, and then refuse to try it, in case she’s right. Peas have lately been one of those things, but on chicken pot pie night I managed to circumvent her stubbornness about them for at least one bite! The cup she had milk in has jellyfish printed on it: one green, one orange, and one blue. She’s really into matching things (making sure her underwear matches her clothing, for example, or reading a book with a duck in it when she’s wearing ducky pajamas). I went that direction.

“Maybe you could share your vegetables with the jellyfish on your cup. I bet the orange jellyfish would like a bite of carrot, because it matches. And you could share a green pea with the green jellyfish before you take a bite, too.”

To my delight, she accepted this as viable and proceeded to share a pea and a carrot with the cup jellyfish, and then ate them for real herself! I could neither get her to repeat the “sharing” nor convince her that a brown mushroom was close enough to share with the blue jellyfish since brown and blue both start with B…but we at least avoided the impasse of “I don’t like peas” vs. my explanations of why she needs vitamins.

One bite each. I’ll take that.

Plus, she willingly ate all the chicken she could find in her bowl, and a couple handfuls of raspberries on the side, so overall it was still a reasonably balanced meal, she ate what was served to her, and we didn’t have any power struggles about it.

Another thing that I think factors into my kids’ willingness to try new things is that I refuse to be their “short order cook.”

At dinner, that means they need to find a way to fill their tummies with what is served, or they can just be hungry. I plan for this policy while prepping: if I cook something spicy for Justin and me, I go ahead and cook something else for the kids, or leave part of the noodles out of the sauce for them, that sort of thing. I don’t insist they eat things I know they won’t like. And any fresh fruit we have in the house is always fair game—they can ask for a banana in addition to or instead of what’s on their plate, and I allow that; crackers, not so much. But if they declare their dislike for what I made before even trying it, I never hop up from my hot food to fix them something else “just to make sure they eat.”

I employ the phrases, “I can’t make you eat it,” and, “only you know when your tummy is full,” to remind them that I choose what to serve, but it’s up to each of them to decide what and how much to eat from their plates. If they choose to not eat anything at dinner, it’s just that: their choice. And when bedtime rolls around, I counter an, “I’m hungry,” with, “Dinner time is time to eat. Bedtime is time to sleep. You can have breakfast when you wake up in the morning.”

I’m sure this sounds harsh. I discussed having his policy with my kids’ pediatrician before enforcing it. He assured me that they would survive a night of falling asleep hungry every once in a while, and he agreed that it would likely encourage them to be more adventurous with food, which has the long-term benefit that possibly they’ll like and ingest vegetables instead of demanding mac and cheese every day, the latter of which I’ll venture to say is possibly more unhealthy than one night without dinner.

At breakfast and lunch time, when I typically only serve familiar foods, I either ask them what they want or offer a few choices. But once I start making the thing they asked for, I don’t go for “I changed my mind.” If her grilled cheese sandwich is halfway cooked and Miryam says to me, “I wanted hummus and crackers,” my reply will be, “Okay, you can have that right after you finish your sandwich.” If the sandwich is then rejected, I revert to the dinner time rule: “you can just be hungry,” until the next regular snack or meal time. In these cases, she usually chooses to eat what she originally asked for.

One last thing: I don’t make too big a deal about the vegetables.

Vegetables are served regularly around here, sometimes in clearly identifiable forms, sometimes “hidden” in mixtures and purées. Justin and I treat them as normal parts of every meal, which (I hope) gives off the sense that veggies are inherently good/natural/not yucky/just something else we eat.

I never make my kids take a bite of veggies before they can have the chicken, or the rolls, or fruit, etc. Sometimes I do insist that they try the vegetable before allowing seconds on bread, or dessert when available. But generally if they turn their noses up at a veggie, I just say, “That’s okay. I can’t make you eat it. You may leave it on your plate. Eat your pork chops.”

In other instances, I just don’t bring up the mirepoix or cauliflower that’s blended into a soup. I just say “yummy soup!” and mention the parts I know they do like: lentils (“they’re like little circle beans”) or of course cheese. On one of those days I actually got a cute and unexpected, “Mommy, I really like these squishy tomatoes!”

“Oh yes, sweetie pie. So do I!”

One time, I had roasted some broccoli, and I placed 2-3 pieces on each kid’s plate, because that’s a veggie and preparation that both of them usually go for. Toward the end of the meal, neither kid had yet touched the broccoli. There wasn’t really enough broccoli left in the pan to save, so I asked them once more if they were going to try theirs.

“No, I don’t like broccoli.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Mommy and Daddy are going to finish this up then.”

We finished off the broccoli.

The kids finally took their bites. They asked for more.

“Sorry, guys, you said you didn’t want any. I ate it all. Next time you can eat your broccoli first so you can eat it all before me!”

I secretly regretted not having saved some for them, but they had taken way too long to decide…and what do you know: the next time I roasted broccoli, they both ate their servings within the first 10 minutes at the table (after I kindly reminded them of what happened last time).

Aaaaaaand now I have The Broccoli Song stuck in my head again.

Tell me a favorite story about kids you know eating/liking something unexpected, or the phrases you use at home to encourage non-picky eating, in the comments below!