Introduction
As children grow, they develop their own food preferences and eating habits. While some children are happy to try new foods, others may become more selective, often described as ‘picky eating’. This can be worrying and frustrating, and over time, mealtimes may start to feel stressful for both parent and child.
Understanding why picky eating happens and how to manage it in a supportive way can make a big difference. In this article, we will explore what picky eating looks like, why it happens, and practical, evidence-based strategies you can use at home to support your child’s feeding journey.
What does picky eating look like?
Picky eating may look slightly different for each child, but common signs include:
- Accepting a limited variety of food
- Avoiding certain food groups (e.g., vegetables or meats) or specific textures
- Strong reactions to new or familiar foods (e.g., running away, gagging, crying, tantrums)
- Insisting food looks a certain way (shape, brand, colour, packaging)
These behaviours often reflect stress or discomfort around food, rather than stubbornness or misbehaviour.
Why are some children picky eaters?
Children may avoid food for many reasons, including:
- Sensory sensitivities to taste, texture or smell
- Immature oral-motor and/or swallow skills
- Environmental factors, such as limited exposure to different foods or inconsistent mealtime routines
- Past negative experiences with food (e.g., gagging or vomiting)
- Medical factors such as reflux, allergies or constipation
Often, several factors may be involved at the same time.
What you can do at home
Create a positive family mealtime environment
- Sit and eat together whenever possible. Children learn best by watching others enjoy food. (Powell et al., 2016)
- Offer the same food choices to everyone to reduce pressure and avoid singling your child out.
- Include at least one “safe” food your child usually accepts
- Offer one new or less-familiar food in a very small amount (e.g., one teaspoon of mashed potato, a tiny slice of fruit)
- Offer a particular food once every two days to prevent ‘food jagging’ (when a child eats the same food repeatedly until they eventually burn out and stop eating it).
- Keep mealtimes calm and distraction-free (no screens or toys), so your child can tune in to their hunger cues and the sensory experience of eating.
- Division of Responsibility (Satter, 2015)
- Your job: decide what, when and where to offer food
- Your child’s job: decide whether and how much to eat
Make food exploration fun
Trying a new food is a big step for many picky eaters. Before a child is ready to eat a new food, they often need smaller, gradual steps. One helpful framework is the Steps to Eating hierarchy (Toomey & Ross, 2011):
- Tolerate (being near or looking at the food)
- Interact (touching the food using a tool or utensil)
- Smell
- Touch (with fingers, hands, body, lips, teeth)
- Taste (e.g., lick or bite and spit out)
- Eat (biting, chewing and swallowing)
Play helps children feel curious instead of fearful. You can support your child by:
- Using simple, positive language to describe food, such as:
- “It’s crunchy!”
- “It smells sweet”
- “This carrot is bright orange”
- Avoiding labels like “good/bad food” or “healthy/unhealthy food”.
- Encouraging sensory play with food, even outside mealtimes
- Model curiosity:
- “This smells sweet, I’m going to try this and see if it tastes sweet.”
- “This feels soft, I wonder what it tastes like.”
- Using a separate ‘learning plate’ during mealtimes to help your child explore new foods without pressure to eat it.
Make small changes to preferred foods
Making one small change at a time, also known as food chaining (Fishbein et al., 2006), helps children learn new sensory properties of food without feeling overwhelmed.
Shape
- Cut sandwiches into triangles instead of squares
- Introduce a different pasta shape if your child always eats macaroni
Colour
- Offer familiar foods in a different colour or shade (e.g., yellow vs orange cheese)
- Add small amounts of colourful ingredients to familiar foods (e.g., rainbow sprinkles on bread, carrots in rice)
Texture
- If crispy fish fingers is a preferred food, try:
- Baked fish fingers (less crispy)
- Lightly pan-fried
- Steamed fish
Taste
- Add tiny amounts of gravy, broth or soy sauce
- Introduce new dips alongside familiar foods
When should I seek professional help?
Consider consulting a speech therapist, dietitian, or paediatrician if:
- Mealtimes are consistently stressful
- You have concerns about your child’s growth
- Your child eats fewer than 20 foods
- Your child frequently avoids entire food groups
- Your child gags, vomits, coughs or chokes during or after meals
- Foods are dropped over time without new ones replacing them (‘food jags’)
- Meals regularly take longer than 30 minutes
Every child’s feeding journey is different
Picky eating is not a parenting failure or a child being difficult. It often means a child needs more time, support, and positive experiences around food.
Picky eating looks different for every child, and progress does not always look the same. What matters more is creating a positive, trusting and pressure-free environment that helps your child feel safe, curious, and confident around food.
If mealtimes are consistently stressful, or if your child’s diet remains very limited, support from a feeding therapist can help you build positive foundations for your child’s feeding journey.
References
Fishbein, M., Cox, S., Swenny, C., Mogren, C., Walbert, L., & Fraker, C. (2006). Food chaining: A systematic approach for the treatment of children with feeding aversion. Nutrition in Clinical Practice, 21(2), 182–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0115426506021002182
Powell, F., Farrow, C., Meyer, C., & Haycraft, E. (2016). The importance of mealtime structure for reducing child food fussiness. Maternal Child Nutrition, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12296
Satter, E. (2015). Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility in Feeding. Ellyn Satter Institute.
Retrieved from https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/satter-feeding-dynamics-model/
Toomey, K. A., & Ross, E. S. (2011). SOS approach to feeding. SIG 13 Perspectives on Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders (Dysphagia), 20, 82–87.
