Feeding a Picky Child

My son is 10 now. He can eat more things than ever before in his life, sometimes. If anxiety creeps in, forget it. We’re back to the same three or four things he’s comfortable with eating. 

He still refuses to eat any vegetable except sometimes broccoli. Fruits, similar to most veggies, are a no-go. Although he won’t eat oranges, he will drink orange juice, but it needs to be 100% juice, no fake stuff. If I’m being super honest, from a nutritional standpoint, his diet could be better. 

I’ll admit that we eat out a lot. Life is busy with a full-time job. We just moved, and frankly, figuring out what to eat at the end of a long day is just hard sometimes. I know going to the drive-through will always be well-received by my son. He won’t object to eating, and he’ll get some food in his system. We still have the challenge of shower and bed ahead of us nearly every evening. 

Most mornings, he will eat something at home. But, if he sees something he likes at school, he will eat there, too. 

I got weary of packing these great lunches for him, for the meals only to come back home and be thrown in the garbage. So, instead of bringing lunch from home, he gets lunch at school most of the time. I figure he’s at least being exposed to different foods. 

Sometimes, he wants to make his lunch. I do not try to correct the meal even if it’s not fully balanced. I simply compliment his independence in making it for himself. 

When he was a preschooler, we worked on feeding therapy with an occupational therapist who said his case was one of the toughest she had seen. He would refuse to eat if it was something he decided was “not tasty” for him. He would say about smoothies, “that is not tasty for me,” and refuse to have them, even if he made them and knew all the ingredients.

“Just wait him out - he won’t starve” was not true for this little guy! It’s still a challenge to get him to eat. As parents, we have to pick our battles. Some days I have plenty of energy to encourage him to try new foods and other days, I don’t. Providing food for a very picky 10-year-old can be soul-crushing sometimes, so I just don’t always put my soul into it. 

I want the best for my son and sometimes that means making a conscious decision to let him eat what he is comfortable with, rather than pushing him to try something new. 

Find more information on this page Challenges with Eating.