Okay - the title of this post is a bit misleading, because I’m going to tell you that the way to get kids eating their veggies is to… not try to get them to eat their veggies. Confused? Hang on in there.
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5 reasons to tackle 'grazing'
Grazing, or offering children frequent (or constant) small eating opportunities, is an easy habit for parents of picky eaters to fall into. In this post, I talk you through why it is worth addressing.
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How to help your picky eater when you've run out of ideas.
Sometimes it really can feel like the end of the road for parents. If you have completely run out of ideas, the strategy I share in this post can be the beginning of your child's journey towards a varied diet.
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Picky Eating - It's time to shift the goal posts
Have you ever had that sinking feeling that whatever you do, nothing seems to make any difference to your child's fussy eating? Maybe it's time to redefine success.
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Your road-map to a varied diet
So you know you'd like your child to eat a varied diet, but the problem is how to help them make the transition. This post is a practical guide to doing just that.
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Variety,variety,variety, variety (variety)
This is my picky eating mantra. A child who is not served a varied diet will not eat a varied diet. Easy to understand - so much harder to act upon.
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Learning to leave food is part of learning to love food - Part 1
This is the first of a two-part piece on throwing away the food your child doesn't eat.
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Exposure: why it pays to be relentless
I recently wrote about menu shrinkage; how parents of picky eaters often describe themselves looking up one day and realising that the number of meals their picky child will eat has become smaller and smaller and smaller... until they are only preparing three or four meals on rotation. Exposure is the enemy of menu shrinkage, and the key to fostering a great relationship with food.
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Buffet style, or "here you go"? How best to serve food to picky eaters.
Many people will advise you to feed your picky eater buffet style, in other words, to have several dishes on the table and let everyone take what they like. This is in contrast with the more old fashioned approach where the adult presents the child with their meal on a plate, including a bit of everything. This post is all about weighing up the pros and cons of both styles to see which best serves (sorry!) the picky eaters in our lives.
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Have you experienced menu shrinkage?
Menu shrinkage. the phenomenon whereby parents play it safe and find themselves serving fewer and fewer different meals to their fussy eater. On the one hand, who wouldn't want to keep meals conflict-free and have their children eating happily? On the other hand, it's a case of prioritising a short term win over long term gain.
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image by Jeremy Keith - source: creative commons
A tale of a dozen oysters
When I was 14, my parents sent me to France to live with a family over the Summer, in the hope that I would learn some French and come back mature, well-rounded and independent (and I think they wanted a break from my teenage mega-strops). I did come back speaking French, so it half worked. Not only was it a linguistic journey, it was also a culinary experience that has stayed with me to this day.
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