What to do with a Picky Eater

If you should have a picky eater:

I was a champion picky eater. My sustenance consisted of bread (without the crust) and cereal. If cereal wasn't fortified, I would be dead. For lunch I would ball up my crust-less white bread so that it no longer resembled bread but a solid lump of bread turd.

Apparently I am not the only person to have done this.

I would also bite my Kraft American cheese into the shape of Texas. No other state, just Texas.
That wasn't a picky eater thing, that was just because I was weird. Formal dinner situations were torture. I was terrified of people judging me for just eating a roll for dinner. Shout out to my dad for letting me sneak my unwanted food to him.

Occasionally, I would bite a carrot or two or eat a thin layer of apple IF the crust was peeled.

I admire people who can do this. I'm grossed out by people who can eat the whole apple core.

I didn't eat bananas until I was 19, hamburgers until I was 21 and steak until I was 22. So it took a while, but GOSH DANGIT, it happened. There's hope for your kids too!

If mealtime at your house looks like this:

Here are a few things you can do that may help with the pickiness:

1. Realize that this is a war, not a battle. Expect it to take some time, like weeks. The theory is to gradually expose your child to a food before ever expecting it to go near their mouth.

2. Allow your child to interact with the food in a non-threatening way. Put it in a bag and let them touch it through the bag.

3. Ask the child to describe properties of the food (color, soft/hard, bumpy, smooth, etc.).

4. Let them touch the food with their finger.

5. Let them play with the food. (Drawing with pudding, making a face with carrots, etc.)

6. Ask the child to feed the food to someone else (someone who likes the food).

7. Let them smell the food.

8. Let them touch the food with their tongue. Literally just touch it. (side note: When I was still picky, I would nobly try a tiny bite of food that I did not want to eat because people asked me to. THIS IS A GOOD THING. But then people would see how tiny my bite was and say, "You can't taste a bite that small! You need a bigger bite!! At which time they would hand me such a large spoonful, that just looking at it made me want to puke. End of wanting to try that food or eat in public ever.)

9. Let them put it in their mouth and then spit it out.

10. Let them eat it.

The important thing with all of this is to celebrate each step. To a kid who has a hate relationship with food, each step is a HUGE deal. When they do one step, don't push it past that. Let them just take one step at a time.

Also, if your kid only eats white bread, don't immediately jump to exposing them to salmon. Start with wheat bread or something similar to white bread. Take it sloooooooow. And none of this airplane crap. They know it's not an airplane.

Best of luck!

Julia Vincent Hetherton