Taming your child’s table tantrums

Ah, the joys of mealtime with a toddler! You know how critical it is that she gets a balanced, fruit-and-veggie-rich diet. Unfortunately, Little Miss Persnickety didn’t get the memo. If she’s not shoving her plate away because the corn is touching the peaches, she’s flailing on the floor because you insisted she eat “one more broccoli tree” before getting a cookie. As you wearily give in and heat up yet another batch of frozen chicken nuggets, you wonder, Does the dinner table have to be a war zone every evening?

Absolutely not, says nutritionist Christina Schmidt, M.S. You and your oh-so-picky toddler can come to an understanding. You can help her overcome her food hang-ups and learn to love (or at least tolerate) the nutritious fare that helps her grow strong and healthy. You can tame the tantrums and make dinnertime a peaceful respite at the end of a stressful day.

“Small children have always been notoriously picky eaters, but as life has gotten more stressful, these mealtime battles are more exhausting than they were in June Cleaver days,” says Christina Schmidt, M.S., nutritionist and author of The Toddler Bistro: Child-Approved Recipes and Expert Nutrition Advice for the Toddler Years.

 “After both Mom and Dad have put in long hours at work, being confronted with a toddler who won’t eat his veggies can be the final straw. Good intentions go out the window. It’s too easy to just give up, give in, give the child a bowl of instant macaroni, and be done with it.”

That reality is what inspired The Toddler Bistro, a nutrition guide, cookbook, and how-to for busy parents of toddlers with picky palates and erratic eating habits. Schmidt felt the need to come up with quick and simple recipes to help stressed-out moms and dads with mealtime meltdowns. The book is also packed with information that explains the cause behind toddlers’ food hang-ups, as well as simple-to-follow techniques that will allow even the weariest of parents to establish some peace in the kitchen.

Read on for some of Christina’s toddler-iffic table tips: 
Outsmart that little rebel. If your child likes to test his limits by saying “no” a lot when it comes to the foods that you offer, be sure to turn away from his tantrums. Giving attention to his protests often fuels the fire. Instead, offer him just a few choices. By giving your child a choice or two at mealtimes, you’re letting him feel that he is still part of the decision-making process and that he has some control.

Invite your grazer to the table...but still give him room to roam. Focusing on food is sometimes an insurmountable task for toddlers. They may be grazers who rarely sit and finish a meal and would rather snack throughout the day. Don’t worry—if you make progress with one out of three meals and some snacks, you are doing very well. Keep up a consistent mealtime and snack routine despite your little one’s obliviousness to the plate.

Expect the unexpected! Toddlers can be highly unpredictable. One day it’s “I don’t want it!” and the next week the same kid can’t get enough of the once-hated food, or vice versa. Whatever it is, as long as you keep offering healthy options to your toddlers, it’s a win/win situation.

Commit to being copied! Now is the time when you can make the biggest difference in your toddler’s eating behavior. Studies show that food preferences are shaped between ages two and three. Be a role model for healthy eating and manners in front of your toddler. Even if the results are not immediate, it will pay off in the long run!
Remember the three bears! Food should be presented to your toddler not too hot, not too cold, but just right, which is warm or close to room temperature.

Make each bite count. Pack each bite with nutrition because you never know when pickiness or loss of appetite will rear their ugly heads, sabotaging your efforts for the day. Your goal is to maximize the opportunity for your toddler to eat healthy, so make sure all of the foods that your toddler is eating are full of the vitamins and nutrients that he or she needs.

Keep the pressure in check. Don’t overreact, scold, bribe, beg, or reward with a treat to get your toddler to eat. Over-controlling your toddler’s eating behavior turns down the volume of the natural internal cues for hunger and fullness. Studies show that unpressured children will instinctively balance their diets.

An alternative to the “clean your plate” concept. Your job is to choose the menu and dining times for your child. Your toddler may decide which of your daily specials to eat, if any. If your child isn’t wolfing down everything on the plate, avoid requiring that your child clean it. Instead, try requesting “courtesy bites.” You may get your child to take a few bites of those peas without all the drama and stress that goes along with cleaning the plate.

Don’t replace food with fluids. Prevent your toddler from filling up on excessive fluids before meals. Offering sips of water or milk to quench thirst is fine. Two full sippy cups before a meal, however, may be the reason the plate goes back to the kitchen untouched.

Avoid short-order chef syndrome. Allow your little purists their eccentricities, such as not wanting foods to touch each other, but don’t cater to special food requests at each meal. This will only reinforce finicky behavior. Offer limited choices (broccoli or carrots?), and serve one sure winner with each meal. Try this trick: Offer a tablespoon of the suspect food with an old reliable favorite when your toddler is hungriest. It works!

Cultivate a culinary kid. Bring your toddler into the kitchen with you and let him or her help prepare foods. Toddlers love to help out and to create, and therefore might be inclined to eat what they’ve helped prepare. You can enlist your toddler, starting at around two years of age, to wash produce, peel bananas, stir and mix, sprinkle spices, help measure and pour ingredients, tell you when the timer goes off, hand you ingredients, decorate and arrange dishes, and help clean up. You can even try creating the menu together!

Shape and sculpt. Cut foods into fun shapes. Use fun cookie cutter shapes for sandwiches, cheeses, and fruits. Make teddy bear-shaped pancakes and swirl mashed sweet potatoes with yogurt. Buy fun pasta shapes such as stars, suns, moons, animals, etc. Make foods as mini versions; silver dollar-sized pancakes, mini muffins, and tiny pizzas really do appeal to those little hands!

Set a serene table. Create a calm and relaxed dining atmosphere for your toddler. Stress can promote poor appetites, so put off your Table Manners 101 lecture for later and just enjoy your toddler time!

Toddlers will get sugar one way or another, so your job is to moderate how much and how often. Research has shown that early introduction to sugary foods encourages sugar cravings in adulthood. Fruit juice flunks out of the toddler bistro diet. You may think that fruit juice is a healthy option for your child—and it is compared to soda and sugary drinks—but note that fruit juice still has a high sugar content, and it lacks protein. Milk and water are bistro favorites.

Soda pop not! Toddlers should be drinking milk and water. Soda contains empty calories, meaning that its calories are missing vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Soda displaces better beverages like milk from toddler diets and can compromise the immune system, dehydrate, interfere with nutrient absorption, and contribute to obesity.

Power struggles with food are dead ends. Believe it or not, diet improves with less parental control and more of simply providing a variety of healthy food choices. Trust your toddlers when they act or say that they are full. “Full” signs are turning the head away, throwing or playing with food, eating more slowly, trying to ditch the high chair, feeding the begging dog, and simply not finishing. Focus on offering many types of nutritious foods many times.

Meats to miss. Avoid bacon, sausages, hot dogs, cured meats, and packaged deli meats. (Freshly sliced meats from the deli are okay.) Besides being high in fat and salty, they contain sodium nitrite, a preservative that can be cancer-causing when these meats are cooked at high temperatures and when sodium nitrite reacts with chemicals in the stomach. Recent data shows that 27 per cent of toddlers are eating hot dogs, bacon, and sausage—not a healthy diet!

The case for carbohydrates. Although carbohydrates are the diet buzzword of the twenty-first century, toddlers need them! Carbs are the brain’s first choice for fuel. They get a bad rap because of the “refining” process, how they are cooked, and the fact that they are often over-eaten. Go for 100 per cent whole grains in breads, rice, pasta, and cereals. Carbohydrates are also in beans, fruits, and vegetables, especially the starchy veggies like corn, potatoes, and peas.

Protein. Toddlers need protein for growth, tissue repair, muscles, hair, skin, hormones, healthy bones, and healthy immune systems. Protein also helps fight plaque buildup on teeth! Foods with a protein punch include meats, fish, and dairy products.

Calcium. Calcium is essential for strong bones and teeth! Only 50 per cent of children ages one to five meet the recommended daily amount for calcium, and it ranks as one of the most common nutrient deficiencies. Not to worry: one cup of milk plus one-half cup of yogurt will satisfy your toddler’s daily calcium requirement.
Incorporating iron. Iron from meats, poultry, and fish is more easily absorbed by humans than iron from plant sources. Vitamin C foods and foods high in protein increase iron absorption. If you have a famous spaghetti sauce recipe, try cooking it in a cast-iron pot. This is another way to add iron to your veggie-based foods.
Praise them! Reinforce healthy eating with praise and role modeling. You’ll be amazed how far this will take you.

For more information, please visit www.BabyBistroBrands.com.

Christina Schmidt, M.S., is a nutritionist and a certified nutrition educator who has been featured on NBC’s Today Show and has written nutrition articles for The Bump magazine. She is also the author of The Baby Bistro, The Baby Bistro Box, and The Toddler Bistro Box. Christina is President of Baby Bistro Brands and lives in Santa Barbara, California.