Picky Eaters and How to Get Your Kids to Eat
Oh, the joys of motherhood. Cooking supper in your pretty apron with your hair fixed and a sweet helper washing dishes as you go…
Oh, wait — this is real life! Supper time can be stressful, and I don’t know a mother who hasn’t stood over the stove wondering why the very meal she worked hard on is met with a wrinkled nose from at least one child at the table.
With five kids of my own, I’ve had a different picky eater at every seat — Emily wouldn’t touch broccoli, James couldn’t stand eggs, and Sarah dreaded coleslaw with her whole soul. The only nights everyone was thrilled were spaghetti and taco nights.
But here’s something that surprised me. Picky eating, as widespread and expected as it feels today, isn’t something children have always done.
Historian Helen Zoe Veit spent years researching the history of American children’s eating habits for her book Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History, and what she found reshaped how I think about supper table battles.
Well into the 20th century, American children regularly ate foods we’d now consider adventurous — pickled things, bitter greens, spicy relishes – without anyone assuming kids needed a separate, blander diet. Pickiness wasn’t always the default. It became one.
Veit traces a few things that shifted this. Early child health reformers, worried about disease and malnutrition, began pushing bland diets for children out of caution.
Shelf-stable processed snacks made grazing between meals normal, which quietly killed appetite at the table. And later, popular parenting advice — most famously from Dr. Benjamin Spock — taught a generation of mothers that pressuring a child to eat was psychologically harmful, which gave picky eating room to become a permanent household fixture instead of a passing phase.
None of that means pickiness is anyone’s fault. It means it’s not inevitable — and that’s actually good news, because it means there’s real room to shift things at your own table.
Related: Family Meals Around the Table
Here’s what actually helps, based on both the history and what’s worked in my own kitchen with five very different eaters:
#1 — Expose without negotiating. Serve the food. Don’t build a case for it, don’t bribe for it, and don’t offer a backup meal. A confident, no-big-deal presentation of new foods teaches a child there’s nothing to resist in the first place.
#2 — Protect their appetite before supper. If a child grazes all afternoon, they’ll have no real hunger to meet your meal with. Keep the window before supper snack-free, and let a little hunger do some of the work for you.
#3 — Let them see you enjoy it. Children watch what we eat far more than they listen to what we say about eating. If you visibly enjoy the vegetable you’re serving, that does more than any lecture on nutrition ever will.
#4 — Don’t create a separate kids’ menu at home. The whole family eating the same meal — not a chicken-nugget standby dish for the picky ones — was normal for most of history, and it’s still one of the simplest ways to raise a less picky eater.
#5 — Give it time, not pressure. Our taste buds genuinely do change. My own children have grown to love greens, spinach, and asparagus over the years — foods that weren’t favorites when they were small. Consistent, calm exposure over months and years matters more than winning tonight’s supper battle.
#6 — Teach the why, not just the rule. Let your children help choose vegetables at the store. Talk about why a food is good for their bodies. Children who understand the reason behind a choice carry it further than children who are simply told to eat.
I do want to say something important here, because a reader once wrote to me about this and she was right to. Everything above describes ordinary picky eating — the kind most kids grow through with patience and consistency. But there is a real, diagnosable feeding disorder called ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), and it isn’t the same thing.
A child with ARFID isn’t being stubborn or spoiled, and the strategies above aren’t the fix for it. If your child’s eating is so restricted it’s affecting their growth, health, or daily functioning — or if mealtimes involve genuine panic rather than ordinary resistance — please talk to your pediatrician.
Related: 5 Tips for Transitioning to Healthier Eating
Food is a gift, and teaching our children to receive it well — with gratitude, with an open mind, and without waste — is part of raising them to be thankful people in every area of life. That’s worth the supper table struggle some nights.
Action Steps to Take Today
- Pick one food your child currently refuses and serve it again this week — without comment, without a backup plan.
- Close the kitchen to snacking for the hour before supper.
- Sit down and eat the same meal your children are eating, and let them see you enjoy it.
- If something about your child’s eating feels like more than ordinary pickiness, write down what you’re noticing and bring it to your next pediatrician visit.
Hey Melissa!
My kids eat a lot of different veggies and I’ve learned a few tricks over the years so I’ll share a few
Start with small portions! If you are introducing a new veggie or a veggie you know your child isn’t crazy about, give them just a bit (and praise when they finish!)
Serve a not-so-favorite veggie with a favorite main course (and praise when finished).
Mix veggies together-again pair an under appreciated veggie w/ ones they like (praise, tee hee hee)
Remember, you can serve veggies raw. My oldest daughter doesn’t like cooked carrots, but she’ll eat them all day raw – and she doesn’t use dressing or peanut butter.
Be flexible and pick your battles – my girls love broccoli and collard greens but aren’t thrilled w/ spinach. So spinach doesn’t appear much at my table, why push it.
Have a great weekend.
Hi Leigh, these are some great tips! Thanks so much for sharing! 🙂
Since you are so often a cheerleader to the struggling wives and moms, and advocate giving ourselves grace, I want to make you aware of a newly recognized eating disorder, ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder). It is essentially extreme picky eating, however it is caused by trauma (that may have even gone unnoticed or unrecognized at the time) And is neither a product of a child’s willfulness nor parents’ failure to discipline properly. Your suggestions are fine for “normal” kids, but there are so many parents out here struggling with both the challenges of feeding an ARFID kid AND condemnation from other parents who have never experienced a child who would LITERALLY rather starve than eat an “unsafe” food (and there are so, so few “safe” ones!) It is EXTREMELY discouraging to hear how simple it is to raise an adventurous eater when you know that you set out to do just that but are fighting a disorder and not just a behavioral issue. It’s like being told how easy it is to write when you are missing an arm. I don’t mean to complain; just inform. Thanks.