As I’ve mentioned many other times in other blog posts, my sweet Little Stinker is a very picky eater.
Thankfully, he will eat some very healthy foods (sprouted grain bread with homemade peanut butter, plain greek yogurt with a little bit of honey, sweet potatoes, etc.).
Thankfully.
Because if he didn’t eat those things, I might just lose my mind (being a dietitian!).
But anyway, I have always wanted to think of some way to convince him to try new foods. He is very, very reluctant. In fact, he just plain would not do it for a long time. And I didn’t want to make it into such a battle that it just made matters worse.
One day, I thought of something that just might break through to him: a sticker chart that involved getting prizes! What kid doesn’t like that?
I put it off for a long time, just because I was busy. One day, I was in Office Depot and I thought of it again and bought what I needed to get to work making this chart.
These are our “rules” for the healthy eating chart:
- Each week we pick a new food to focus on
- I give him a reasonable amount to eat — more than one bite but not too much to overwhelm him
- I wait until he is hungry to give it to him — kids are much more likely to “like” a food when they are hungry than full (common sense, eh?)
- At the end of the week, if he has tried that food every day, he gets a smiley face and a prize (so far they have all involved super heroes)
He has loved doing this! He would not even taste an egg before doing this, and I even caught him say quietly that he actually likes blueberries.
I also try to use this as a way to teach about nutrients. For example, when he was eating the eggs, we talked about how they help you get strong and have muscles like Spiderman.
Next week he wants to do carrots and we will be preparing them in many different ways!
Not bad for a “picky eater!”
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