Spring Picky Eater Success Strategies

Yay, Spring is here! Spring is the beginning of the season for many opportunities to give picky eaters ways to explore and be interested in food. Because for many picky eaters, veggies and fruit are less scary when you’ve grown them, picked them, or chosen them from the farmers’ market. So today, I’m sharing with you some spring picky eater success strategies.

While the saying may be, “seeing is believing”. For many a picky eater “seeing is eating”.

Well at least for some. Other picky eaters will happily participate in growing, picking, and shopping but still won’t try them. Which is okay, because all of these activities still contribute to your picky eater building food-confidence, which one-day will turn into eating a wider variety of food being eaten.

Picky Eater Key to Success

So go ahead and plan family activities that involve exploring food. The key is that these activities are undertaken in the spirit of fun and exploring – not pressure to eat/try the foods. For example, if you follow up your growing of the radishes with “Try them. These are the radishes that you grew. Come on, you’ll like them.”, you likely will unintentionally undo all the confidence that you built with the activity of growing the radishes. And, next time you ask your little-one to help you in the garden, she/he will refuse because she/he knows that growing leads to pressure to eat.

Grow Them:

• Bring your picky eater to the garden centre. Let him/her choose plants and/or seeds. Plant them together in the garden. A pot on a patio is great too.

• Fast-growing veggies like radishes and lettuce are a great match for short attention-spans.

Pick Them:

• Do any friends or family members have veggies or fruits that you can offer to pick?

• Plan a family trip to a u-pick farm. Strawberries are great because they grow low to the ground. Check with the u-pick farm whether they allow young children (some do and some don’t).

Choose Them at a Farmers Market:

• Have a game where everyone in the family gets to choose 1 veggie or fruit to buy and try.

• Enjoy the free samples that many stalls offer.

• Encourage your child to talk to the farmer. Their enthusiasm is contagious! Ask how they grow the veggies to engage kids’ innate curiosity. For example, do the veggies grow up high in air on tall plants or secretly hidden under the ground

Looking for more success strategies for your fussy eater? Keep browsing through my blog, I share lots, such as this picky eater success tip.

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