My kids like to eat, and they like to eat good food. I don’t know whether to attribute this to luck or my parenting skills, but I’ll err on the side of giving myself credit any day! Here are my top five tips to help children learn to appreciate good food.
1. Eat good food. I know that I’m a good cook, but sometimes I’m a better cook than others. When the food is good, the kids eat up, accompanied by lots of lip smacking and ‘mmmms’. Even if you don’t like cooking, having a few stock meal ideas on hand will help your kids learn to appreciate good food.
In other words, master a few good dishes, rather than trying to do a whole range halfheartedly. Roast chicken, scrambled eggs and toast or a quick and easy lentil soup are usually crowd-pleasers.
2. Eat different kinds of food. Five different variations on pasta, five nights a week can make anyone turn their nose up. One night make breakfast for dinner, the next lasagna with zucchini, the following tofu in spinach sauce. And yes, my kids eat all three dishes.
3. Propose it often. I’ve heard that it takes a new food being offered fifteen times before a child accepts it. One of our favorite meals is leek and potato pie. My children didn’t like it at first, my now they scarf down every bite.
4. Let them help. My older two children love to cook. They stir the batter or cut things with a plastic knife. Or they help me carry things to the table where we do the preparation. If they’ve made it themselves, children are much more likely to try something new- even Endive Gorgonzola soup
5. Don’t force them. I never make my children finish what is on their plates. On the other hand, they know the rules about eating quite well; this helps them to gauge when they’re hungry and how much they want to eat. Our rules? If they don’t finish dinner, then they don’t get cheese or dessert. If they get down from the table then they are finished eating. No snacks, except for right after school. They can eat as much as they want at meal time, of all the different choices, but I don’t cook special foods for them.
Again, I don’t know if it’s through luck or the things I do. But I do know that my children love good food as much as I do- good thing, considering that we live in France!
Kelly is a blogger, mom and graduate student. She lives in France with her three kids, four cats and handsome French frog of a husband. You can find her at Almost Frugal and Almost Frugal Food.
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I love how you mention that you don’t cook special meals for your kids. That’s something my husband and I feel strongly about. We’re hoping that our kids will like a variety of foods, as neither of us are picky eaters. Thanks for your great tips!
Great post and tips! We have two girls who are now 17 & 20 who eat anything and everything. And, they are slender and fit too thanks to the healthy eating habits they grew up with. Our son is 8 so we are still working on him.
As a side benefit, other families always THANKED us for raising kids who would eat what was placed in front of them! Kids can be such food snobs that they are a nuisance when they are old enough to eat at friends houses. Our kids never complained about food, we just told them we needed to be grateful for what we have to eat.
We asked our kids to eat all of their vegetables for health reasons and out of gratitude for whoever prepared it. If they didn’t want to, basically it just triggered the bedtime routine after dinner, instead of dessert time or playing time, so they always wanted to finish the veggies so they could stretch out the fun of the evening. We didn’t make eating a miserable experience, they just knew eating healthy foods was important and we wanted them to be healthy because we loved them. And we wanted them to have good table manners.
Thanks for the great tips! I think I need to get my son more involved in the preparation of his veggies!
Melissa
melissa @ the inspired rooms last blog post..“Moving” into the Holidays!
I’ve never done the “short-order cook” thing around here; I cook one meal for everyone.
Vintage Girl is strange (in my view) with her likes and dislikes. She likes pesto, humus, shrimp, and split pea soup, but won’t eat a peanut butter sandwich or graham crackers – go figure.
I think we set a really good example of healthy eating, so I hope it’s true that repeated exposure will help her develop good eating habits eventually!
Vintage Mommys last blog post..Holidays by Hand Festival Kicks Off!
We brought our 2 girls up in France and thought we had done quite well introducing them to lots of different foods so that they would be easy houseguests on their annual trip back to the UK to see grandparents and cousins.
But they ended up with a reputation for being a little difficult as they objected to tinned pasta, oxo gravy and marmite sandwiches! Still, they liked the bakedbeans, fish and chips and toad-in-the-hole.
Youngest daughter had never really liked leeks but an enterprising grandmother got her to try them saying they were Welsh leeks not French leeks and we have never looked back since.
such great advice – our little guy is 2 and hit a super picky streak around 18 mos – it feels like his taste buds are slowly becoming more cooperative. We want him to be well rounded with food so this is definitely helpful – I’m rather vegetable picky myself, and wish I wasn’t, and know I need to work harder to prepare and eat more healthy options as an example. Great encouragement!
jodi @ bprs last blog post..Sewing up a Homemade Holiday
Great comments! I think it’s also important to accept some likes and dislikes on behalf of kids (and ourselves to be honest). For example, my first son loves peanut butter, but the second can’t stand it. And my daughter is obviously a meat lover, even at the tender age of 1. So I know what they like and they don’t and to some extent I cook around those issues. On the other hand, my second son, the peanut butter hating one loves the spinach tofu dish cited above, made with, you guessed it, peanut butter!
Kelly from Almost Frugals last blog post..Guest Post at Gidget Goes Home
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