Charlie and Olive eat a decent variety of food now, but our biggest challenge has always been their small appetites. They don’t eat much breakfast, they eat lunch at school, a tiny snack can completely ruin their appetites, and there have been many a night where they eat 4-5 bites (begrudgingly) for dinner and say they’re done. Every time my mom visits (she was just here this week), she’s dismayed by how little interest they have in eating.

I talk a lot about how to avoid raising a picky eater here in this post, but I also wanted to focus on how to get your little ones to just eat more. Over the years we’ve tried many “tricks,” and we still employ many of these on a regular basis because they really work!


(Olive eating rice with seaweed)

1. Light a candle. It really helps make dinnertime feel special, and anything that keeps the kids sitting at the table longer is a plus. You can even turn on some ambient music and use a tablecloth to set the mood and really make dinner a special occasion nightly. If the kids misbehave during dinner, we blow out their candle. If they are good throughout dinner, they can blow out their own candle at the end, which they always love doing!

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2. No snacks… and other French Food Rules. I mentioned this in my post about French Kids Eat Everything, but the single biggest change we’ve made in the past 2 months is that we’ve eliminated snacks. Overall the kids don’t eat more, but they are eating more whole foods instead of snacks because they’re hungrier at mealtimes. We will give them an after school snack if they ask for one because it’s a long time between lunch and dinner, but it’s always something like fruit or yogurt.

3. Read books. We first started reading books at dinnertime because Olive was such a reluctant reader. Now that she loves books, we’ve found that the kids stay seated much more happily and longer at dinnertime when we read them books. It does take away from some of our dinnertime conversation, but we do this practically every night, and even at breakfast, because it works so well.

4. Wrap food in seaweed. If the kids aren’t interested in eating much dinner, I’ll bust out some seaweed which we always have on hand. I wrap a little rice, meat, and vegetables in a piece of seaweed, and they eat it up because they both love seaweed.

5. Brothy soups. Charlie had a problem with food textures/a sensitive gag reflex when he was younger, and the food he ate best was soup because it was easy to swallow. Korean food is largely based on brothy soups so I make them in big batches and freeze them in ziploc bags. Both kids love soup because it goes down so easily, and they will usually have some if they don’t want to eat much. Often the kids just drink the soup with a straw!

6. Tell stories. Even more than books, Charlie loves it when we make up stories where he is the protagonist or anything to do with superheroes. We like to tell stories about how the Hulk ate so many green vegetables that he ended up getting so big and strong and green. We even got him to eat liver once by calling it “hulk meat!”

7. Use patterns. I blogged about eating with patterns here, and it is probably the one thing that has had the biggest impact on Charlie’s eating. I slice up some olives or pickles (his favorite foods), and he alternates one bite of food then one bite of olive or pickle.

8. Cook/garden/fish together. Getting the kids involved in the food making process always has a big impact on the their eating. Olive picked the lettuce and herbs used for this salad below at an event at the botanical garden. She would never try salad, but she did here (and didn’t like it but at least she tried it!). And when Charlie caught a fish in the Philippines, he wanted to eat it right away!

Even grocery shopping together can make a big difference!

9. Make food fun. You can serve foods bento style, arrange them in patterns, make a happy face with a sauce… even something as simple as sticking toothpicks into food makes it more enticing for kids.

10. Use cheese. If I put some grated parmesan cheese on top of vegetables or a sauce, the kids are much more likely to eat it and eat more. You can also do this with butter or even crumbled bacon!

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Do you have any tips to get your child to eat more?

Picky Eating part 6 of 6

1. 25 Ways to Avoid Raising a Picky Eater by Mrs. Bee
2. 11 Best Tips for Picky Eaters by Food
3. Picky Eating: Is it in the Genes? by Extra Extra
4. The Psychology of a Picky Eater by Mrs. Chipmunk
5. French Kids Eat Everything? by Mrs. Bee
6. 10 Tips To Get Your Kids to Eat More by Mrs. Bee