10 Tricks to Encourage Eating
Holidays are the time for us all to relax. Not running to routines often feels like a break in itself. But then, reality returns and it’s time to re-establish good habits. There are some tried and tested ways to approach food to support a child to eat competently and well, and to make feeding an easy and pleasurable experience for everyone. Similarly, expanding the repertoire of foods eaten can be supported with some simple and gentle strategies.
1. Create an environment conducive to eating. The way we approach food and feeding has an enormous impact on how confident a child
becomes and the number of foods that are competently eaten.
2. Schedule. It is important to establish specific eating windows through the day, rather than allowing children to graze at will. This works on a few levels:
– Everyone knows when food is coming.
– A child is likely to be hungry coming into a snack or meal.
– Prepared food tends to be more nutritious than pre-packaged snacks.
3. Encourage communal eating. Eating together, especially with an adult present supports eating well. If adults eat at the same time, even if it’s just a few bits and pieces, there is modelling and demonstrating good eating habits.
4. Make choices available. Offering some options – but not too many – is a great way to help a child become involved in meals. “Would you like carrots, peas or both?” is a great style of question. Choice can be introduced in other fun ways, too. “Should we eat inside or over there by the trees?”
5. Loosen your control. Often giving over some autonomy is positive. For example, allowing a child to choose what goes on their plate from a
selection we, as the caregiver, have offered.
6. Grow confidence. It is ideal to create a growth mentality putting across to a child they are able to eat a variety of foods well. Look to be positive about what a child is capable of, maybe not today but long term, as we would with reading or swimming. Use affirmative language and actions.
7. Create comfort. The most important ingredient for increasing the number of foods accepted and eaten is the frequency with which we serve them. For example, if a child sees a vegetable three to four times every week, they are far more likely to eat it than if it rarely appears. We do not willingly eat something that is outside of our comfort zone, and it takes time to build this. The more a child interacts with a food, the more likely they are to eat it, too.
8. Allow for opportunity. Step one is continually building a comfort level with foods and step two is giving a child multiple chances to eat them. If vegetables are the focus, for example, having them available throughout the day, rather than just at dinner, gives additional options for take-up.
Serving vegetables first, when everyone is most hungry, can also help. Normalising vegetable uptake in the way we talk, serve and eat can be
very supportive.
9. Change up the food. Giving a specific food a makeover can increase acceptance as can serving with dips or pairing a less favoured with a more favoured food. Coordinating a different method of delivery like skewers/cocktail sticks/muffin tins to boost interest. Another advantage of loading up a skewer, for example, is that it helps to increase interaction. Even pulling something off the skewer is encouraging touching and possibly smelling and some flavour trace.
10. Slurp it up. Serving less accepted foods in liquid form, purees, smoothies and soups can be easier to manage. Incorporation, adding less favoured foods in small amounts to accepted foods is often a win. For example, carrot cake, spinach in fritters, or chicken mince in potato cakes. Behind the scenes involving children in trips to the market, in growing some food like micro-herbs, prepping snacks cooking and serving all help to build a comfort level and an interest in food.
11. Have fun with food! Enabling play with food supports building a comfort level with it. Interacting with food away from the table can also
help with sensory sensitivities. For example, using uncooked rice or beans in play or manipulating dough, pastry or even yoghurt. There are many food experiments we can do at home or at school, too. For example, dough rising, apples floating, freezing foods (watermelon and grapes work well) and making butter from cream are all simple science exercises that are great fun. Although jumping back into routines may not be top of the list, simple things that we put into place and do consistently can make a real difference to how comfortably and well
children eat.
