Hi, I'm Sarah Baldwin. Welcome back to another "Sunday with Sarah." This week I
got an email from Haley Crabtree who wanted to know how Waldorf teachers
handle picky eaters. This is a common question that I get and I'm sure
many of you have the had this question for yourself.
So this week's video is about eating, healthy eating, and minimizing those
power struggles over food.
That's the first thing I want to say, you never want to get into a power
struggle with a child at mealtime. Mealtime should be a pleasurable time of
day, a time of connection, and power struggles can create a lot of anxiety and that's
not what we want.
So how can we minimize the likelihood of that happening?
Well, as I spoke about in one of my earlier videos, which was all about rhythm, rhythm
is a great way to avoid picky eating and power struggles and by this I mean
planning ahead, choosing foods that your child likes, and having them be
consistent day-to-day, whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner time. For
instance, let's talk about dinner time. Monday might be pasta night, Tuesday
might be taco night, Thursday could be macaroni and cheese.
I think you get the idea but this will go a long way,
not only in preventing picky eating, but also help you,
probably, with grocery shopping and planning ahead and having
a kitchen that's well stocked for the week ahead and not running short of things
and having to scramble to make something that may be unfamiliar to your
child that he or she will refuse to eat.
So that's one thing to know about young children: they really like rhythm,
they really like predictability, and so planning ahead and
having a weekly rhythm is really your greatest friend. Same could be true
for breakfast, although I must say a lot of children, a lot of people, enjoy having
the same thing every day for breakfast but you could have a pancake day and a
cereal day, eggs.
Anyway, I think you get the idea. And so you want to avoid
unfamiliar foods. Children especially 4-6, even 3-6,
will turn their noses up at something that's unfamiliar but that said,
you don't want to confine them to just the same foods all the time so as long as
you have something at the meal that is familiar, you can introduce unfamiliar
things. One thing we did when I was a teacher at mealtime, was we
gave the children a choice of portion size.
Having none of something was not an option but I would ask
the children how much they would like:
a papa bear, a mama bear, a baby bear size or a fairy drop. For something
a child didn't like we'd offer just a fairy drop, something on their plate, and
they might turn their nose up, they might refuse to eat it at first, but it was
consistent and there was always a fairy drop. He or she might eventually try it
and even discover that she likes it. I saw this happen many times, children
refuse and turning up their noses and just being given a fairy drop week after
week but then eventually, being a little adventurous or seeing other people, other
children or other family members enjoying the food, would try it and
discover they like it or they even love it. Another great way to
discourage picky eating is by involving children in cooking and meal preparation
and setting the table, even in the grocery shopping. For instance, in my
classroom on soup day every child would bring a vegetable for Stone Soup,
whatever they had from home: a carrot, a potato, squash, zucchini and we would all
work together and chop the vegetables and sing a song about our Stone Soup.
And it might have unfamiliar vegetables in it that week but the children were so
involved in the process they take a little bit of ownership for it and may
look forward to eating it more. Another trick is to make the food fun.
On our Stone Soup day, we used little crinkle cutters that are available at
Bella Luna Toys, they're also known as a french fry slicer — with a little S shape,
a wiggly shape — and you can chop the vegetables with this. They're not
sharp and a child can't cut his fingers with it but it makes little wiggly
shapes that are fun. Might put alphabet pasta into a soup just to
up the fun factor. The other thing you want to do is model healthy
eating. When they see other family members enjoying the food
or other siblings or classmates enjoying their food and eating a wide variety of
things and minimizing any talk about the foods we don't like. You don't
want to be a short-order cook.
Let your child get used to eating what the rest of the family is eating and I
would really discourage you from preparing something special just for a
picky eater. They'll come to expect that and they'll be less
adventurous when it comes to eating.
As you may know, I have two children and my firstborn son,
Harper, who's actually editing this video, he was more of a picky eater and
I would make special things just for him and he remained
a picky eater for
most of his childhood. My younger son, William, while I was in Waldorf teacher
training, went to a wonderful home care provider, a Waldorf trained teacher, who was
German and they spent all morning cooking delicious homemade food. She'd
make lasagna for lunch and her house always smelled wonderful. She was a
little stricter. Everybody was served the same thing and everybody was
expected to eat. That was your choice and if you didn't eat it you'd go hungry.
So William, as a result, was always a much more adventurous eater and would
pretty much eat anything offered to him. So I discourage you not to make the same
mistake I made with Harper, don't be a short-order cook.
So I hope some of these tips are helpful and i'll bet a lot of you have found
other tricks and tips that would be helpful to others so please share
your ideas here.
Let us know what works for you and if you have any further questions
I can help answer, leave those here too. Leave them as a comment on this blog post.
Thank you so much for tuning in every week and see you next week, bye-bye.