This post will continue the discussion of picky eating. In my last post I looked at how parents can help or hinder the process. This post will look at strategies for getting children to try new foods and some tips for the extremely picky.
The Parents
As I discussed in the last post, many times parents are as large a part of the problem as the children. Sometimes you will be able to get the parents on board with trying to instill better eating habits, but most of the time you will only get half-hearted response from parents. They will probably not fight your efforts at childcare, but they will not help the process at home at all. This will affect how you approach this in the childcare setting because every week will be almost starting over after a weekend of bad eating habits. It will feel like taking one step forward and two steps back every Monday. Changing bad eating habits in the childcare setting alone takes an enormous amount of time and patience. I want you to completely understand that before you embark on what will probably be the most thankless journey of your career. The kids will complain. The parents will complain. The state may even give you a hard time. However, tell yourself every day that you are changing those little ones' worlds for the better one small thankless change at a time.
Baby Steps
The most important part of any strategy to improve a child's eating habits is to make changes in baby steps. If you completely revamp your menu all at once, you will have mass mutiny from everyone involved. This will go far beyond the complaining you will get over the baby steps. People can get nasty about food in case you did not know. Take one item and improve it. Wait a week or a month according the level of hysteria that ensues over the one item and do another one. It might be as simple as changing from canned green beans to frozen green beans. However, let me tell you that every time you move to a fresher food, you will get more backlash than you thought possible. When I changed to frozen green beans from canned ones, everyone that had been eating green beans quit. On the green beans I had to start all over again. This will be repeated every time you make a change for the better. Please, understand the war in which you are about to embark. When you move to a fresher source, the cooler of the food is usually darker. I have found that the darker the color the stronger the war over trying it. However, once the initial hysteria subsides, the children will settle back in and slowly begin to eat the food again. Once the children get used to the baby steps, the hysteria will lessen but not go away. I will also warn you that one of the hardest changes to make will be removing flavored milk. I have had children sit in the floor and wail over white milk. When I changed the milk, I used several strategies together to help with that particular transition.
Let Children Help with Preparation
Another strategy that helps is to have the children help with the preparation of the new food the first time it is served. However, do not think that this works like a charm. It only helps. Extremely picky eaters will throw hissy fits no matter how many strategies you employ. The extremely picky will help with the preparation, but if you think they are actually going to put that in their mouth, you are extremely naive. This strategy works for the slightly picky. The name of this game is to get as many children trying new foods in as many ways possible in order to have some positive peer pressure to kick in. However, do not be naive about positive peer pressure either. Negative peer pressure is far more powerful than positive peer pressure. One extremely picky eater can undo months of work in one meal.
A Rewards System
At my childcare we use a rewards system utilizing incentive charts. Every time a child eats ALL of a vegetable, fruit, or eggs, they receive one check on their chart. When they fill up the chart, they get a small book. This system works well once you already have the process in motion. This system does not work well to entice extremely picky eaters to try new foods. The extremely picky will not consider the reward worth the bite. However, once you have picky eaters trying new foods, this system will in time help them eat more vegetables than you thought possible. Once they discover that a food is not half bad, the check is worth eating all of it. When I changed the milk, this is one of the strategies I used. Normally, the flavored milk children are also the extremely picky eaters that never seem to get checks. When I gave them the option of getting a check for milk (after the week of wailing subsided), they tried the white milk and were soon getting a check for it. This helped them get the "check bug" and made them more open to trying other foods to get checks. After you have had this system in place for 6 to 9 months, it really produces some impressive results. However, please understand that improving the menu will take an extremely long time to accomplish. The school systems in California that are trying to change the food requirements after one year must not understand just how long it takes to get results. You must be in this one for the LONG haul.
Grow a Garden
The last strategy for this post involves having the children grow a garden. It is beneficial for the children to understand what whole food looks like. They will enjoy watching their plants grow and picking the produce. They will absolutely love to shuck the corn because that makes a wonderful mess. However, do not expect this to work like a charm either. The extremely picky will still have a meltdown if you ask them to try a bite. This strategy works for the slightly to moderately picky.
My Menu is Nonnegotiable
I actually employ all of these strategies plus the ones I will cover in next week's post on the extremely picky eaters. Unfortunately, the number of extremely picky eaters grows exponentially with every passing year. It seems to me that every time I start a new child, the war over the food becomes more intense. I will admit that children starting my childcare for the first time suffer from culture shock in a major way because I have been improving my menu for years now. The children that have been here for years eat things most Americans would not believe (beets and spinach anyone). The new children stare at the old ones in disbelief when I set down the plates for weeks. The food I serve here might as well be from Mars as far as they are concerned. It is a source of contention for months, and I have lost clients because I would not let their child eat what he/she wanted. However, I have worked too hard and too long to let one picky eater undo everything. One of the main conferences I now have with new clients involves the menu. I will tell them bluntly that the menu is nonnegotiable, and if they do not like it, they are not a good fit for this place. Many other places will feed their child junk if that is what they desire. I have seen the incredible benefits of children that eat well, and I am not interested in going back to the craziness that processed food brings with it.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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