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Expert Q&A

	By Harriet S. Worobey, M.A. Early Childhood Educator Director, the Nutritional Sciences Preschool

How can I get my 5-year-old twin boys to eat normally? All they eat is cereal and biscuits and won't even try anything else.

The first thing that I want to let you know is that being a "picky eater" and restricting yourself to only a few foods is quite normal for 3s, 4s and 5s. The issue of how to get young children to eat what you would like them to is quite difficult ? and even more difficult for you with two children ganging up on you at once!

I do have to tell you that the bigger deal you make out of this, the more difficult it will become to change their behavior. Young children have nearly complete control over what they eat. Even if you force it down their throats, they can bring it back up again. So, it's best not to start a battle that you can't win. It is important to respect a child's food preference. Does this mean that you should just accept that they will always only eat cereal and biscuits? No. There are many things to try. Before I go into a few suggestions, I would like to recommend two books, both by Ellyn Satter, that can help you in more detail than I can in just a few sentences: Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense and How to Get Your Child to Eat ... But Not Too Much.

Research has shown that it may take up to seven introductions to get a child to taste a new food. So don't be discouraged, and also don't invest so much emotional energy into what they eat that you take it as a personal rejection when they won't try a certain food. Things that might help:

• Let them grow food (fruits and vegetables).
• Let them help you prepare food and taste a little along the way.
• Take them to a farmer's market and buy samples for tasting as well as to take home.
• Try serving food in a different way ? raw if you usually cook it, lightly-steamed or in a soup.
• Serve new foods when they are hungry, not when they have just filled up on cereal and biscuits.
• Try fruit toppings for cereal or fruit surprises inside biscuits.
• Eat a variety of foods yourself with obvious enjoyment.
• Draw a large poster of a body, and have the children find out what vegetables are good for different parts of the body (such as protein for muscles, vitamin A for eyes). Then have the children paste magazine pictures of food on the part of the body that they help.
• Establish regular meal times; don't let them snack on cereal and biscuits all day.
• BE PATIENT! Many children go through this stage and do come out of it!

Good luck!

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