This post is sponsored by Lil Miss Appleseed but all photos and opinions are my own.
You know you’ve been there. You’ve spent all afternoon picking out groceries at the store and then come home and cook a healthy and delicious meal for your family only to find your child won’t eat it. You feel like all of the effort you made went to waste. Then you are left with debating whether or not to let you let your little one go to bed hungry or accommodate them and make them something else. You aren’t alone. I’ve been there and so have millions of other moms.
So what do you do?
First stay calm. Then give your child a choice. Tell them they can eat what you made or eat a healthy alternative. You don’t need to make them an entirely different meal. In fact, they won’t go hungry even if they skip a meal. So don’t worry. Give them another option like a banana, a almond butter sandwich, or yogurt with fruit and granola. Make sure you don’t give them options like pizza, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. Some children are simply picky eaters. Others just don’t want to even try new foods or foods they have deemed not good enough for them. Texture, taste, smell, color, and or size may home something to do with it. Eating is a sensory experience and stimulates multiple sensory receptors at the same time. Finding the right recipe means more than the right ingredients, it means the right combination of preferences. Eating preferred foods over non-preferred foods can be quite a challenge but here are some tips that may help!
Make Eating Into a Game: Does it surprise you that I incorporate play into mealtime? All you need is a kitchen timer or an equivalent like your phone. Set the timer for 2 minutes. Set up a paper plate or a piece of paper in front of your child. Mark a start line on one side of the paper. If it isn’t too messy, have them play a food race with the food on their plate. The carrots can race the chicken. The fish can race the potatoes. Whichever food item that passes the finish line, their mouth, is the one they will eat first! I give them two minutes so they won’t eat too quickly and also to give them time to convince themselves to actually eat the item/s!
Food Sticker Chart: Make your child wanting more! Children love to have anything they can’t have. So put only a little bit of food on the plate at one time. This will help not to overwhelm your child when eating and also stir an innate desire to have more! Maybe if they ask for seconds, they get a treat! Positive reinforcement can go a long way, so use it to your advantage. Maybe even have a special sticker chart where they can earn stickers for each time they try a new food or each time they finish their dinner!
Let Them Be The Chef: Let them pick out the vegetable for one meal each week when you are at the grocery store. There are a lot of food books out on the market and they can help educate your child on various vegetables to choose from when they get to the store. They will start associating various vegetables from their book when they are at the store and get excited to want to try them. You may even let them to pick out a entire meal once a week for the family! It is quite the responsibility. Just like getting line leader at school, they can be dinner helper at home! Maybe you can even let them help you cook their vegetable or meal in the kitchen with you!
Use Toys and Techniques: When we make pasta with zucchini in it, we say that they are green gems that have been found from hidden treasure. The kids search their pasta for the hidden gems and it makes eating them more fun. Maybe your child has a favorite show or character that you can play off of to help them eat. Sometimes we will have Mickey Mouse pretend to call them on their play phone asking them to help him with a special mission to eat their food. Sometimes it helps to have our daughter dress up in a princess dress or costume so it’s not her eating the vegetables but Cinderella who loves vegetables instead. You can even utilize puppets if need be to help convince your child to eat!
In our home, we use all of these tools on any given day. We have to mix it up to make them work. The same tool won’t work each time. And sometimes none of them will work and we just have to be patient and find another alternative that works for our family. Our rule is they have to at least take one bite of each food on their plate. Many times that’s all they have of whatever vegetable they are given, but they are constantly being exposed to different foods, tastes, smells, and textures, and eventually they may take more than one bite! The key is to be consistent!
I also know how messy eating can be. And even though my daughter is too old for bibs, my son still uses them all the time! In fact, he even uses them when he’s not eating. He has been wearing bandana bibs lately because he is getting his two-year molars in and has been drooling quite a bit. He even wears them sometimes as a fashion statement.
Our favorite bandana style bibs are ones from Lil Miss Appleseed. They are so soft and made of 100% two-layer combed cotton on one side and 100% fleece on the other side! These bibs are unique because the material undergoes an additional step during manufacturing to make it softer, stronger, and smoother than regular cotton.
Photo: By Chrissy Walther Photography
The owner, Heather Gonio, is a working mom and performing artist from the Seattle area. After having her daughter, who is now 4, she developed a passion for children, babies, motherhood, and helping other moms. For years she researched ways to make a stable income doing what she is truly passionate about, where she can help other moms and children on their journeys. Eventually, she came across many success stories of people building their own brands and using the power of Amazon to promote them, launching their products on the platform and leveraging the millions of online shoppers who already live there. So earlier this year, she decided to create her own brand of baby products. When searching for the name, she decided to use her daughter as inspiration. When she had her very first ultrasound after becoming pregnant, the technician told her and her husband that she was the size of an appleseed, and so they began calling her Lil Miss Appleseed until they found out she was a girl! How fun is that?
Creating Lil Miss Appleseed isn’t just about creating bibs or products. It is about creating a brand that represents all the goodness and magic that babies and children believe in. She can’t say exactly where the brand will go over the next few months or years, but she hopes to create something that will make people smile. Having a child for her has been the most eye-opening, life-changing experience of her life. To see the world through a child’s eyes is a true gift. Lil Miss Appleseed sees the world as it could be and not as it is; like Lil Miss Appleseed, she hopes that her bibs add a touch of fun and magic to a baby’s day.
I just love supporting mom entrepreneurs. Moms support other moms and that’s how the world goes ’round! And I love supporting baby products that I love. These stylish bandana bibs have the most fun patterns that are great for boys and girls! And the best part is that the colors don’t fade even after multiple washes. And they are so easy to snap on and stay on! These bibs are super absorbent and easy to take with you on the go. They easily fit in your diaper bag and barely take up any room at all. I practically have them all over my house and my car.
You can order an 8 pack on Amazon for less than $14. You can buy it for yourself or they make an excellent baby shower gift! And make sure to sign up for their newsletter for updates! And head back to my Facebook and or Instagram now to WIN A PACK OF 8 BIBS FOR YOURSELF!!!
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