Question
What is, in your experience or even in your completely unqualified opinion, the best way to encourage kids to try new foods? Benny recently tried and liked shrimp and CRAB, of all things. I don't know *why* he tried them or why he liked them. Am I doing something that accidentally worked? Or was he just inexorably drawn by destiny to ask for and subsequently enjoy the shrimp and the crab? Mysterious. How do you get kids to try unfamiliar food?
posted by Lostcheerio @ 10:55 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Present and re-present!
Keep putting it on their plates every week or so, and eventually it won't look wierd to them and they see you eating and erlishing it---don't oversell--- then they try it. Then they will either like it or not. This works with Maisy, who will not eat ANYTHING the first few times she SEES it. She says "What is THAT? That is FWEAKY."
1)Run him ragged in order to get him ragingly hungry. With the graze-on-snacks system, he doesn't actually get super hungry very often. Down at the beach, he had less frequent access to snacks.
2) Have him sit in a group of hungry little kids who just wade into the food like it won't ever happen again. Nancy Austin swears by this one. She says she's never seen it to fail that a crowd of kids will inspire a sort of frenzy that makes kids try anything.
3) Let him cook it. While he cooks, he's constantly sniffing and tasting. Maybe after trying the ingredients, he'd be willing to try the final product.
4) Tell him the food is one of Dan's favorites. We told him that Dan just loves shrimp and crab, that they're his favorites. Benny wants to be like Dad.
5) Read a story with that food mentioned enthusiastically. He's very influenced by frequently repeated language.
6) Eat it in front of him just raving about how good it is, but don't offer him any. After several times of this, he'll be willing to at least sniff it. He watched you madly yumming over crab several times before making up his mind to try it.
7) Make a ritual about how the food is eaten, something involving special implements. For example, he might be willing to try steak if he were allowed to use a sharp knife. Holding shrimp by the tail and all the hardware that went along with eating crab were interesting to him.
I think there was a confluence of all of these but the second when Benny decided to eat shrimp and crab. He didn't get to cook them, although he did watch.
i do a bit of what joss does. they need to TRY everything at least once per meal. one of my co-workers (a nutritionist) talked about the fact that it can take up to 13 times of tasting something before liking it.
irene adores shrimp. and crab. and fish. and smoked oysters. and scallops. and and and. it's astounding. rhys gags when he puts any of the above in his mouth. fun.
I'm totally with Ahno on #6. My Mary won't eat dinner or any form of food put in front of her at the table past lunch time. So we all sit down to eat and she doesn't get any until she asks for it and REALLY wants it.
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