You decided what’s for dinner tonight.  You went to the grocery store.  You cooked dinner.  Your child comes to the dinner table and yells “Eww! I’m not eating this!” and runs away.

How many times have you tried to get your child to eat new foods?

Will your child only eat the same seven foods each week?

Is dinnertime the most stressful part of your day?

Do you feel like a short order cook?

For many families, mealtime is one of the most tiring parts of the day.  At the same time, eating a variety of nutritious foods is one of the most important things for a child’s overall growth and development.

Many children have nutritional deficiencies that can negatively affect behavior and learning.  Proper nutrition can build a strong immune system and support a child’s play and development.  Eating a variety of nutritious foods from each food group can have a positive effect on a child’s brain function, memory, learning, attention, focus, mood, behavior, growth, and overall health.

Here are three strategies you can implement at home tonight to support positive mealtimes for your family:

• Provide choices: it’s a win-win.  Your child feels like he has a say in the decision.  When children know they have a sense of control, it empowers and encourages them to participate in the experience, make positive choices, and be independent.  At the same time, you still achieve what you want because you are happy with the two choices you are offering.  You don’t mind which choice he picks, as long as it’s one of the two you provide.  If he wants to eat broccoli instead of carrots, great!  If he wants to eat five bites of the new chicken nuggets instead of six bites, awesome!

• Use timers: setting clear expectations effectively communicates to your child what is going to happen.  Letting her know when mealtime is finished takes the struggle out of the experience.  Instead of dragging dinner on for an hour “until you clear your plate,” a timer communicates to her “when the timer beeps in 20 minutes, dinnertime is over.” This takes the arguing out of mealtimes and lets your daughter know that she has the opportunity to make good decisions and independently eat however much or however little she would like.  When the timer beeps, the table is cleared and more food will be served at the next meal/snack time.

• Eat together at the table whenever possible.  If the family is frequently balancing soccer practices with math tutoring, ballet class with therapy sessions, this may feel impossible.  Start small by eating one meal a week together at the table (it could even be breakfast, rather than dinner!).  This provides a wonderful opportunity to model healthy eating, provide reinforcement, and give your child lots of praise. When we eat together, we not only share in the social aspects of mealtime, but it is also an amazing time to model for our children how eating delicious, healthy food makes us feel great.  When we eat the same foods that our children are eating, it communicates a feeling of safety and normalcy.  We also then have the chance to praise them for eating with their utensils, for sitting nicely at the table, and for trying a bite of new food. 

What’s one strategy you will try tonight with your child?  Comment below!