- My father-in-law loves to tell a story about my husband
when he was little and they would often go out to eat
and my husband's favorite food when he was little
was french fries, as most kids' are.
My father-in-law would constantly encourage my husband
to have ketchup with his french fries
and he would say, it's so delicious,
you're really going to like it, you should try it.
And this went on and on for years.
Finally, one day my husband just out of the blue
decided to stick his french fry in some ketchup
and put it in his mouth and guess what?
He loved it, right?
He loved it and he never ate french fries
without ketchup again.
So I want to talk a little bit today about how to encourage
your children to try new food.
For some of you, that is like pull your hair out,
so frustrating you can't get your child to try new food.
Now there is a few things that you need to know
about the nature of children.
One is, they're very skeptical eaters.
Toddlers in particular are very skeptical eaters.
So the first time you put something
brand new in front of them,
the chances are extremely high that
they're not going to take a single bite.
And the next time they may not either.
And this can be anywhere
from 17 to 36 exposures
to something new before a toddler will even taste it.
Right?
So make sure your monitoring your expectations around that.
Don't give up, don't just decide, oh she doesn't like squash
I'll never put it in front of her again.
You do need to keep exposing them, right?
Let them see it, let them see it,
let them see you eating it, let them see it some more.
Right?
Without pressure.
Now that's the biggest mistake
parents make in any kind of a food scenario.
Is that they apply pressure,
right?
The nudging and urging and bribing and begging
to taste it, or eat it, or have more,
is the worst mistake we can be making for our children.
It's externalizing a process that is very internalized.
We need to have mastery
over feelings of hunger,
feelings of full, what we like, what we don't like.
Okay?
So please don't pressure your children, just let it be.
They'll come around, they really will
but it's going to take time.
Now, after you've given them a chance to have exposures
to new things, then what you can do
is encourage taste.
So you're not saying, you have to eat this.
You're saying, why don't you taste this?
There's a huge difference there, right?
And eating means I've got to finish
everything in front of me
or I have to have several bites in a row.
Tasting is just putting it in your mouth.
That's all you have to do, you don't even have to swallow it
if you don't want to.
And make sure when you're offering tastes,
that they're tiny, just a tiny, tiny little piece,
let's say a muffin,
just break off
the tiniest piece of muffin and offer a taste.
And if she puts it in her mouth
and spits it right back out again, that's fine.
Praise her for tasting it, right?
And then you can say things like,
what did it feel like in your mouth?
Was it soft?
Is it hard?
Was it sweet?
Was it salty?
Just get her to start exploring, you know,
what are the different textures and tastes that food have?
Don't ask, did you like it?
Or don't you like it?
That's a bit too vague, you want to get more specific
with was it mushy?
Was it crunchy?
And get her to start thinking about that, right?
So taste
is the focus,
not force though.
You don't want to get into a position where you're saying,
you have to taste this.
For some kids, they're just going to put up a wall
and they're not going to budge
and now your going to get into a battle of wills
around tasting things, too.
So just, basically, two rules here.
Lots of exposure, repetitive exposure right?
Then encouragement to have a taste.
And three, what does it feel like?
Taste like?
Smell like?
As they're having tastes.
And you will find that over time, they will start
becoming more adventurous and tasting more and more things
and deciding which ones they'd like more of
and which ones they don't
but you've got to think about food as an evolution,
right?
You're just creating a situation where your children
feel safe enough to try things
or maybe not try things.
And sort of grow into a really good
food vocabulary
with time and patience.
Thanks so much for watching today.
Sleep well.