At Island Living 365 we have a very fussy toddler when it comes to her food. Mealtimes used to be exhausting. A battle of wills that our toddler would win every time. If our toddler had her way she would live off dry cereal, sausages and the occasional little tree (broccoli to you and I). However, at last I feel we are making real progress! Finally our toddler is eating carrots and even the odd pea.

so what changed?

Well firstly I felt really reassured when I read that when offering children new food it can take them 15 to 20 attempts before they like it! Knowing this made me feel more positive and as a result meal times changed for the better. I felt empowered and mealtimes stopped being like a battleground. We made some changes and dinner times became calmer and now we all look forward to sitting down and eating together.

These are our top five tips that we felt really worked when feeding our fussy toddler.

1. Take them to the supermarket or food market and encourage them to choose a vegetable that they haven’t tried before. Discuss what would be a healthy food to eat for dinner. Then when they have it for their dinner later that night you can remind them that this was the vegetable that they chose.
2. Try and eat the same meals as your toddler/child at the same time as a family.
3. Involve them with the preparing of the food. Sit them on the work surface next to you and explain what you are doing.
4. Don’t be tempted to overfill the plate. Put one food on the plate that they aren’t keen on or haven’t tried before with other foods that they like. If they don’t like it just reassure them that it doesn’t matter and thank them for trying it and guide them to eat the other food on their plate. But don’t give up on the food that they didn’t like. Try offering it again at a later date.
5. No matter how tempting, don’t try and bribe your toddler to eat with the promise of pudding. I was very guilty of this!

Do you have a fussy toddler? What do you find works for you?