Want your kids to love eating with you? Try these easy tips and see what happens!
1) Don’t cook to order
If you want your kids to eat well, then when you’ve prepared dinner tell them, “This is what’s for dinner. If you don’t like it, that’s fine; you don’t have to eat it. But there isn’t anything else.” The American Academy of Pediatrics concurs with this philosophy and says children should eat what their parents eat for the best long-term outcome.
2) Make the food tasty
Kids may not want to eat spicy and garlicky, but a steady diet of bland pasta and butter will only help develop a rut. Provide a steady diet of flavorful foods for your family, offering up different flavors from time to time and encouraging everyone to try a bite!
3) Put veggies in the main course
Rather than insisting that your kids eat cooked carrots or steamed broccoli, try adding your veggies to the main course being served. In Jessica Seinfeld’s book, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kid to Eat Good Food, she offers up all kinds of great ideas for incorporating vegetables in unique, yummy ways.
4) Eat together
Some parents feed their kids earlier than they themselves eat, but when children are young, they take their cues from Mom and Dad. If Mom and Dad eat dinner with the kids, and show adventurous eating habits, then the kids will be encouraged to eat better. Common sense.