How to Deal with a Picky Eater Survival Guide (2024)

Would you like to know how to deal with a picky eater in your home? Are you tired of making multiple meals? Check out this awesome survival guide to get your child to eat. These tips will help your child eat everything on his plate…well, almost everything.

I bet you’re thinking, “Ha! Ha! You have never met my child. This will never happen.”

Yep. I get that.

But we all start out the same way when we are born. We neither like nor dislike anything when we come out of the womb. Something changes at one point or another. From my observation, the change happens when a child becomes a toddler.

Somewhere between the ages of 1-3, a child starts developing an opinion and says “no” to everything.

Picky eating is normal, but it can be difficult when your child says “no” to food. Eating is the ultimate power trip for kids. They say “no,” and you can’t do a darn thing about it.

Or can you?

In this post, I will tell you how to deal with a picky eater. These tips are from my old-school pediatrician. If what you are doing isn’t working, try this instead. It really works!

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Before I tell you how to deal with a picky eater, I would like to come to your world and talk about what causes picky eaters.

You could be doing a few things to create a picky eater environment.

My first guess…you might be making separate meals. You have one meal for you (and your spouse), and then you make another for your kids.

Am I right?

And I bet I can guess what your kid’s meals look like. Perhaps something with pasta, corn, potatoes, white rice, pizza, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, carrots with ranch, maybe green beans (canned-most have added sugar), applesauce (with corn syrup), flavored yogurt (sugar), cheese, and peanut butter/ jelly (most have sugar) with no crust?

Oh, and ketchup (more sugar).

Some of you only wish your child ate that many foods! You may only get your child to eat four or five things on this list. You are stuck in a rut.

Perhaps you have taken your child to the doctor recently because he is not eating enough and not gaining weight. The doctor intervened and suggested Pediasure to supplement his diet.

How did this happen? What went wrong?

After all this, I bet you’re wondering how to deal with a picky eater.

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How Can Parents Encourage Their Kids to Be Less Picky Eaters?

The truth about picky eating is that it usually isn’t very healthy.

If you look back at your kid’s menu, you will notice that corn, rice, potatoes, pasta, nugget coating, pizza, commercial fruit/yogurt, ketchup, and bread turn to sugar once in the body.

Yep, lots of sugar. No wonder you have a picky eater. He is trained to eat sweet stuff. Who doesn’t like sweets?

Now read yourPediasure can…more sugar. Sugar is the second ingredient after water, followed by corn maltodextrin. Corn maltodextrin is refined sugar and a preservative. Read the rest of the ingredients in Pediasure. It includes a whole bunch of other stuff produced in a laboratory.

Did you realize this is what your child is ingesting daily if he is on Pediasure? Here is the ingredient label for Pediasure so you can see it for yourself.

Instead of Pediasure, choose whole, unprocessed foods with lots of color. Introduce them slowly, and don’t buy junk food so it’s unavailable. Encourage other things like playing outside instead of staying on the couch with a bag of chips.

Is It the Parent’s Fault If a Child is a Picky Eater?

I felt like a failure because I didn’t know how to deal with a picky eater. Frankly, I was scared to do anything. But I had to do something because I knew it was my responsibility to feed my kids healthy food.

I realized I wanted to be the fun mom who always made yummy food. It turned out that it wasn’t the best thing for my son.

I had no one to blame but myself. I created a picky eater by feeding him all the carbs (sugar). He had developed a taste for sugary food.

Somehow, my choices evolved into a toddler in charge of mealtimes. Ugh!

Wait, what?

Yes, he was in charge, not me. I realized I had to shift the power back to me and retrain his taste buds to eat things other than high-carb foods. Then, once he had learned to make good choices, I would shift the power back to him.

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How to Deal with a Picky Eater

Here are three easy tips on how to deal with a picky toddler or kid. My pediatrician suggested doing this instead of feeding him Pediasure. You may think it’s old school, but it really works!

1. Make one meal for the whole family

That sounded simple. The only problem was I knew my child wouldn’t eat it. He said, “Don’t worry, he’ll get hungry…eventually.” He reminded me that kids who get the flu or other sickness go for two or three days without eating much.

What, starve my child? No way! I didn’t want to do that. It sounded like a lousy mom hack.

But I listened further.

2. Don’t force your child to eat.

If he doesn’t eat it, wrap it up and put it in the refrigerator. No snacks. The kitchen is closed unless he decides to return to eating dinner later.

This is how you start shifting the power back to your child. That way, there are no power struggles.

3. Serve the wrapped-up meal the following day for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or until it is eaten.

So I tried it. And it worked.

My son would not eat it for breakfast the following day, but he ate it for lunch. He never went a total of 24 hours without food. My son didn’t wither away, go into cardiac arrest, or anything else. The only thing he did was eat healthy food.

I had to do this only a few times before he learned to make better choices. We never had problems after that. This is so much faster and easier than struggling with your child for years! This is how to deal with a picky toddler.

You won’t believe what he ate growing up. Find out below.

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Can You Grow Out of Picky Eating?

From personal experience, I would say that I made a conscious effort to “help” my kids grow out of picky eating. I continued to offer lots of good food and had them eat at least three bites of something new.

Most of the time, they ate the whole thing after they had tasted it. There were a few things they didn’t like, which is okay. (This is how to deal with a picky eater!)

Let me give you a list of things we ate at my house (still do): collard and turnip greens, salad, cabbage, summer and winter squash, broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, spinach, beets, turnips, celery, carrots, avocado, kiwi, star fruit, papaya, cantaloupe, honeydew, coconut, spiraled zucchini, spaghetti squash, etc.

You get the idea.

Yes, my kids liked them all. For real!

I did this with both of my kids when they were young. Because I addressed the problem early, they had a very diversified palate throughout their childhood, teen, and adult years.

It was a bonus when they visited a friend’s house. Parents loved having them over because they were easy to feed. The moms often asked me how to deal with a picky eater because they had kids who wouldn’t eat anything but carbs.

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What Should Parents Do If They Have a Picky Eater Who Is a Teen?

If you want to know how to deal with picky eaters who are older, keep reading. There is hope for you too.

You still need only to make one meal at mealtime for the family.

You are not a short-order cook.

If your teen decides not to eat it, it’s no big deal. Always have fruits, veggies, and protein available if he gets hungry.

Snacks: Have a basket for each child. Put one week’s worth or a few days of snacks in it. Don’t buy more than that. (Blame it on the new budget you have put in place.)

Your teen can eat the snacks in one day or spread them over the next several days. It’s not your problem if they’re gone before the allotted time ends.

The point is to guide your teen to better choices regarding processed food. You don’t want a huge power struggle, so you may have to do it slowly.

Having a good family mealtime is more important than having meltdowns over food. And you definitely don’t want to cause an eating disorder.

Just don’t make separate meals! That’s not preparing your child for the real world.

*Don’t worry about what they eat outside your home. It’s not worth trying to manage it, and control never leads to anything good.

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How Do I Fix My Picky Eater?

The only way to fix your picky eater is to positively reinforce new habits. If you work at it, you can retrain taste buds to like healthier things.

I once read that picky eaters are not born; they are made. After seeing the transition with my child, I have to agree.

Of course, if you don’t eat healthy food, you probably won’t be able to deal with a picky eater at your home. You are the best example of them eating right!

I hope these tips for picky eaters helped you.

*Before you try this, ask your pediatrician if these tips on how to deal with a picky eater are okay for your child. I do not want to be the cause of any harm that could come from skipping a few meals.

Do you have tips on how to deal with a picky eater? Comment below.