The dreaded meal planning… I haven’t met anyone who likes to meal plan, especially those doing the chore for a family (if you like to meal plan, we have to meet! I want to know all your secrets). Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE to cook. It’s probably one of my biggest passions. But the meal planning and the grocery shopping (oh, that’s like the 7th circle of hell for me—thank you online ordering/curbside pickup for saving my sanity) is not my favorite.
After going through the planning, the shopping, and then making a meal at the end of a hectic day, the one thing that will almost make me want to throw a tantrum like a four year old is my own four year old saying she doesn’t want to eat what I made or that it’s “yucky” while pushing her plate away and erupting in tears. It sends my anxiety through the roof and makes me want to scream. But instead of giving in to my feelings—or to my daughter’s—I instead implement these coping mechanisms to work toward the ultimate goal: everyone in our family eats the same thing and we enjoy our meal together.
I do have a few things I stand firm on as I plan our week’s menu:
- I don’t make special meals for our daughter—she is offered what is on the menu and no special meals are made to give into her demands
- We all eat together (work schedules permitting, of course)
- We don’t fixate on how much is eaten at any given meal
This is what we have developed as tools that work for us, and though every meal isn’t perfect, we’re laying the groundwork for developing a diverse palate and adaptability when it comes to food. We look at each meal and food offering as practice and trust that she is getting the nutrition she needs (using the principle of not looking at each meal, but what’s consumed the whole week as a gauge). As a result, she is so far thriving and has thankfully hit every growth milestone since birth, so we feel we’re doing something right.
So, here are the things we do as we prepare meals in our family:
- We select menu items we like—with some safety nets thrown in. As an example, my husband and I love ramen. Our daughter loves pasta and broth, but isn’t so keen on mixtures yet. If we plan to make ramen as one of our meals for the week, we do a deconstructed version for our little one. Her plate looks something like this: she gets a cup of broth and a plate with ramen noodles, some cut up chicken, a hardboiled egg, and to round out the meal, we keep some cut up veggies in the fridge, so we’ll add some carrot sticks and avocado slices on the side to cover the food groups. This works for almost every meal we make, but it may take a little creativity. We don’t cook foods separately just to appease her, but we adapt. For example, we may go out of order when following a recipe and cook off the protein part of a dish with minimal spices added and portion some out for her, then proceed with the recipe adding in the spices later. Like this week, we made a pumpkin, kale, turkey, and white bean chili, so we cooked the turkey first (as the recipe instructed), then set some aside for our daughter, then added the spices to the pot, continued with the recipe, but put some of the canned beans on her plate. Once it was time to eat, we ladled off some of the chili broth into a small bowl for her and added the chili condiments to her plate: grated cheese, avocado, diced tomatoes, etc. She ate what she wanted and took a taste of the broth and refused to eat more of it, but we took it as a win: she was exposed to the more complex flavors, and still got the nutrition of the meal to feed her little growing body. We all ate the same food, but the plating of the meal just looked a little different for her.
- If at first we don’t succeed, we keep trying. I have a little secret… toddlers and young children can be fickle, especially when it comes to food. Shocking, I know! Joking aside, whatever we are serving up, we put a little tablespoon worth on our daughter’s plate no matter what. She doesn’t have to eat it, but our goal is for her to have an experience with that food. She sees it, at bare minimum, but sometimes she’ll pick it up to inspect it, smell it, touch it, she may even put it in her mouth and proceed to spit it out, but sometimes, she’ll decide she likes it, and eats what we gave her plus seconds, thirds, fifths, even! Sometimes, we’ll offer a food 10 times and she won’t touch it, but then on the 11th time, she’ll decide to try it. We keep offering the food with no pressure and allow her to dictate what she eats off the menu that night. She has access to the foods on her plate (that part isn’t up for negotiation), but she decides what she eats and how much of it. If she eats only one food on the plate and asks for more and there is some, she eats as much as she wants of that food. That might mean sometimes she eats only rice or meatballs, but as a rule, she’ll usually make up for what she missed at the next meal (reference back to the idea of looking at the whole week and not just the individual meal).
- We all eat together, and when we can, prepare meals together. Mealtime is sacred in our house. It’s our time to decompress and bond as a family. Both my husband and I love to cook and our daughter is picking up on the meal preparation process, as this is the culture in our home. We try to do as much of the work together as we can or we split the chores—one of us cooks and the other does the dishes, for example. Our daughter loves to pitch in where she can do so safely. We bought her a set of safety knives and allow her to practice her skills with appropriate foods for her to cut up or we let her help stir food as it cooks, with our close supervision. This has taught her to be a little more adventurous and try foods as we prepare them, for example, while she practices cutting up zucchini, sometimes she’ll grab a bit and sample it while she works. This has really helped to broaden her horizons. When it’s time to eat, we set the table together and sit down to dinner. We focus on talking about our day or upcoming plans, but try not to talk about the food except to complement the chefs, but we try to refrain from commenting on how much (or how little) anyone has eaten and stick to neutral conversation. If our daughter is feeling particularly picky or emotional about the meal’s offerings, we do offer some of the pre-cut veg from the fridge as a side, or a slice of wholegrain bread (our favorite is Dave’s Killer Bread, The Good Seed since it’s a nutrient powerhouse), as we do supplement our own meals with some bread on the side from time to time, so we don’t really count this a catering to her whims.
- We make dessert a part of the meal, sometimes. We don’t always eat dessert, but if our daughter is particularly fixated on say, a brownie from the pan we made earlier in the day, I go ahead and cut an appropriate sized piece for her and put it on her plate with her dinner. Brace yourself… she eats it immediately, but she always proceeds to eat her dinner and the novelty of having dessert is gone. Magic! If she asks for more, we simply reply, “That was your dessert. Now it’s time to eat dinner.” She moves on with her life and so do we. This won’t be easy for all kids, but we are pretty matter-of-fact about it and don’t respond if she tries to erupt into tears or have an absolute meltdown. It’s happened a time or two, but our plan for this is to remove her from the dinner table and sit in a nearby room for a few minutes while she cools down. It works pretty well and as long as we’re consistent and do the same thing every time, she has learned that persistence does not pay off. As the parent, we stay calm, maybe repeat what we said earlier, and invite her to join us again at the dinner table when she’s ready. We usually stay and sit with her if she’s particularly upset, but most times we’re able to go back into the dining room and finish our meal and a few minutes later she comes back to join us.
I hope these ideas might help ease some of the tension and anxiety mealtime can bring sometimes, and truthfully, we experience those sometimes, too, but sticking to our rules and allowing some grace, we have been pretty successful at feeding our little one diverse meals and exposing her to a variety of foods. Our goal is the long game here: helping her to grow into an adult who eats a well-balanced diet that isn’t afraid to try something new. We may not succeed, but at least our daughter will have been exposed to healthy choices as a child, and hopefully some of these habits will stick and improve her overall well-being the rest of her life.
-Sissy