How To Get Your Kid to Actually Try a Vegetable Tonight (with Jennifer Anderson From Kids Eat in Color)
How To Get Your Kid to Actually Try a Vegetable Tonight
You made dinner.
You put a vegetable on your child's plate.
And now you're watching that vegetable sit there completely untouched.
So you try to help.
"Just take one bite."
"You haven't even tried it."
"The carrots are really good tonight."
"Can you please just taste it?"
And somehow, the more enthusiastic you become about that carrot, the less likely your child seems to be to put it anywhere near their mouth.
If you've ever wondered how to get kids to eat vegetables, registered dietitian Jennifer Anderson of Kids Eat in Color has an approach that might surprise you.
Stop trying so hard to get them to eat the vegetable.
In this episode of Educated Parent, Jennifer and I talked about why feeding children can become so emotionally loaded, especially when you're dealing with picky eaters. More importantly, Jennifer gave us simple strategies you can literally try at dinner tonight.
No elaborate recipes.
No hiding spinach in brownies.
You may just need a vegetable, a toothpick, and a willingness to stop caring quite so much about whether your child actually takes the bite.
Why Do We Care So Much About Vegetables?
Before we get to the toothpicks, it's worth asking why vegetables can bring up so much emotion for parents in the first place.
We don't see all foods neutrally.
Think about broccoli.
What word comes to mind?
Probably healthy.
Now think about pizza.
Many of us have been conditioned to immediately categorize that as unhealthy.
Jennifer explained that our culture attaches all kinds of assumptions to food, health, socioeconomic status, education, and even what it means to be a "good" parent.
If your child happily eats Brussels sprouts, you might feel like you're doing something right.
If your child refuses every green object you've ever placed in front of them, you may wonder what you're doing wrong.
But Jennifer offered a much healthier way to measure success:
Your win is putting the food on the table.
Their win is eating it.
Those are two separate things.
Your Child's Bite Isn't Your Parenting Report Card
This distinction is incredibly important.
If your definition of successful parenting depends on what your child does, you're going to feel like you're failing constantly.
Children are learning.
They're unpredictable.
Sometimes they cooperate. Sometimes they don't.
And sometimes they inexplicably reject the food they happily ate three days ago.
The same principle applies to healthy eating for kids.
Nutrition matters. What children eat matters. But if every bite becomes evidence that you're either succeeding or failing as a parent, meals become incredibly high stakes.
You become anxious.
Your child feels your anxiety.
And suddenly everyone is sitting at the table staring intensely at a piece of cauliflower.
That's probably not creating the relationship with food you wanted in the first place.
Why Pressure Can Backfire With Picky Eaters
Nobody particularly enjoys being forced to do something.
Imagine someone repeatedly telling you:
"You need to eat this."
"Come on, just try it."
"It's really good."
"Take one bite."
Even if you were initially open to trying the food, you might start resisting simply because you don't like being pressured.
Kids aren't that different.
Jennifer explained that children know when you're trying to get them to eat something.
They pick up on all our little tricks.
And depending on your child's personality, the pressure itself can become a reason to say no.
This is especially important for picky eaters, who may already feel uncertain or uncomfortable around particular foods.
When the parent increases the pressure, the child can increase the resistance.
So what happens if we do the opposite?
Try Saying: "You Don't Have to Eat It"
Imagine your child stands up at dinner, crosses their arms, and announces:
"Dinner is gross. I'm not eating this."
Instead of arguing, Jennifer recommends a very different response:
"Okay. You don't have to eat it. Just sit with us for a few minutes."
You just removed the battle.
There's nothing left for your child to fight against.
Jennifer used this approach with her own children, including while navigating significant feeding concerns with one of her sons.
Her message remained predictable:
This is what we're having.
We're going to sit together.
You decide whether you're going to eat it.
That doesn't mean parents stop providing structure. In fact, consistency and predictability are central to Jennifer's approach.
The difference is that the parent takes responsibility for what the parent can control rather than trying to control whether the child takes the bite.
That's one of the most useful parenting tips in this entire conversation.
Predictable Parents Can Take Some Stress Out of Dinner
Jennifer's approach isn't simply, Let your child do whatever they want.
It's about clearly separating responsibilities.
You provide the meal.
You provide the opportunity.
You create the structure.
Your child decides whether they're going to eat.
When that structure is predictable, children learn what to expect.
Jennifer also acknowledges one of the biggest fears parents have about this:
What if my child doesn't eat?
What if they're hungry later?
What if they wake up hungry?
What if I lose an entire opportunity to get calories into them?
Jennifer understands that fear personally. One of her children fell off his growth chart, so she knows what it's like to lie awake wondering whether your child is getting enough to eat.
For her family, a predictable bedtime snack helped provide another eating opportunity and reduced some of the pressure around dinner.
She also suggests that if you're nervous about changing your approach, you could practice at breakfast first rather than starting with the meal that already feels the most emotionally charged.
That's an important reminder that you don't have to overhaul family dinner tonight.
You can practice.
Why Dinner Is Often the Hardest Meal
There's another reason learning how to get kids to eat vegetables can feel particularly difficult at dinner.
Everyone is tired.
You've been parenting all day.
Your child has been doing kid things all day.
Dinner is also often the meal where parents put the most effort into providing vegetables and creating a balanced meal.
So now you have tired parents, tired children, lower appetites, and a meal into which you've poured a lot of effort and expectation.
That's a perfect recipe for conflict.
Jennifer's strategies are so useful because they don't ask you to become even more invested in the outcome.
They ask you to lower the stakes.
And that's where we get to toothpick magic.
Strategy #1: Try "Toothpick Magic"
Let's say you want your child to try cauliflower tonight.
Jennifer's first recommendation is not to choose the strangest vegetable they've never encountered before.
Choose something reasonable.
Maybe they've seen cauliflower many times.
Maybe they've tasted it before.
They're just not particularly interested in eating it.
Now get some toothpicks.
That's it.
Put the cauliflower on the table and give everyone toothpicks.
Maybe you put a toothpick into each piece like a tiny hors d'oeuvre.
Maybe everyone gets their own toothpick and gets to stab the cauliflower themselves.
Jennifer calls this "toothpick magic."
Why?
Because toothpicks invite action.
They're novel.
They're fun.
They turn the food into something you can interact with.
And instead of announcing, "Look! I found a fun way for you to eat cauliflower!" you're going to do something even more important.
You're going to leave your child alone.
Strategy #2: Eat the Vegetable Yourself
Pick up your toothpick.
Stab your cauliflower.
Eat it.
If there are other adults or children at the table, they can do the same thing.
And don't spend the entire time watching your hesitant eater to see whether it's working.
Jennifer actually recommends ignoring them.
You might casually notice something about your own food:
"Oh, this cauliflower is crunchy."
Maybe you smell it.
Maybe you listen to see if it makes a sound.
Maybe you say something silly.
The point isn't to perform an elaborate show designed to manipulate your child into eating.
Children will pick up on that.
Instead, you're genuinely interacting with the food yourself and allowing your child to observe.
This is modeling.
And modeling can be an incredibly powerful part of healthy eating for kids because your child gets to watch people they trust interact with the food without feeling like everyone is waiting for them to do the same.
Curiosity Is Better Than Opposition
I've seen this dynamic with my own kids.
My daughter loves vegetables. My son is more hesitant.
If I simply offer him a pepper, he may not be particularly interested.
But if his sister is excited about an orange pepper and talking about how orange it is, suddenly he wants to know what's going on.
"I want to try orange pepper."
Why?
Curiosity.
Kids are joiners.
When other people are genuinely having fun with something, they want to know what they're missing.
That's a completely different emotional state than having a parent hovering over you saying:
"Try the pepper."
When we think about picky eaters, our immediate goal doesn't always have to be consumption.
Maybe the first win is curiosity.
Maybe they stab the cauliflower.
Maybe they smell it.
Maybe they touch it.
Maybe they watch you eat it.
They still may not put it in their mouth tonight.
Jennifer emphasizes that you have to let go of the outcome.
That's difficult, but it also takes an enormous amount of pressure off both of you.
What If They Still Don't Try It?
This is important.
You can do everything Jennifer recommends and your child still may not eat the vegetable.
That doesn't mean the strategy failed.
For a child who is particularly selective about food, expecting one playful dinner to completely change their eating would be unrealistic.
Instead, you've created an experience with the food that wasn't defined by conflict.
Your child saw it.
They interacted with it.
They watched you eat it.
They experienced the food without being pressured to perform.
That's still meaningful.
One of the most valuable parenting tips here is to stop judging every strategy by whether it produces immediate compliance.
Parenting is full of things that work gradually.
Feeding can be the same way.
Strategy #3: Tell Jokes at Dinner
Jennifer's third strategy almost sounds like it has nothing to do with food.
Tell jokes.
Make your child laugh.
Have fun together.
Why would that help?
Because you just changed the focus of dinner.
Instead of everyone concentrating on whether your child is going to eat the vegetable, you're concentrating on connection.
Jennifer explains that reducing anxiety can also change what is happening physically in the body. When we're less stressed, chewing and swallowing can become easier, saliva production changes, and muscles involved in swallowing can relax.
A child facing an unfamiliar or intimidating food may experience real stress around that food.
Connection can help bring that stress down.
So instead of asking:
"How do I make my child eat this?"
Try asking:
"How can we make dinner feel good tonight?"
That's a powerful shift.
Healthy Eating Isn't Just About What Gets Eaten Tonight
This is where Jennifer's larger philosophy around healthy eating for kids becomes particularly important.
The goal isn't simply to produce a child who eats vegetables.
We also want children who develop a healthy relationship with food and with their bodies.
Jennifer's book, Feed Them Well: How to Raise Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life, is designed around that bigger goal.
She wants children to learn to eat a variety of foods, make decisions about what to eat, feel comfortable in their bodies, and eventually navigate food confidently themselves.
That's much bigger than broccoli.
And it's why focusing exclusively on whether your child ate tonight's vegetable can sometimes cause us to lose sight of what we're actually trying to teach.
Parents Need Feeding Confidence, Too
There's another side to this conversation that I think is particularly important.
Many of us weren't taught how to have a healthy, confident relationship with food ourselves.
Maybe you grew up surrounded by diet culture.
Maybe foods were labeled "good" and "bad."
Maybe adults around you were constantly talking about weight.
Maybe you're still trying to figure out how to feed yourself without guilt, restriction, or anxiety.
Now you're supposed to teach your child something you were never taught.
That's hard.
We see the same thing in parenting around emotional regulation. Parents come to us at Thriving Child Center because they're trying to teach children emotional skills they never learned themselves.
Feeding can create a similar challenge.
You're trying to raise a confident eater while simultaneously working through your own history with food.
That deserves compassion.
Three Things You Can Try Tonight
So if you're wondering how to get kids to eat vegetables, here's what Jennifer wants you to try tonight.
First, get some toothpicks.
Pick a vegetable your family already knows and make interacting with it a little more playful.
Second, model eating it.
Don't stare at your child.
Don't repeatedly offer it.
Don't make your enthusiasm fake.
Simply eat, interact with, and enjoy the food yourself.
Third, laugh.
Tell jokes.
Connect.
Make dinner about being together instead of making the entire meal a referendum on whether your child takes a bite of cauliflower.
And remember that your child still might not eat it.
That's okay.
Your Win Is Putting the Food on the Table
For parents of picky eaters, this might be the most freeing message from my conversation with Jennifer:
Your win is when you put the food on the table.
Their win is when they eat it.
Your job isn't to force the second win.
Your job is to provide opportunities, structure, consistency, modeling, and connection.
Those are things you can actually control.
And when we approach healthy eating for kids that way, dinner doesn't have to become a nightly battle over broccoli.
So tonight, try one of these parenting tips .
Get the toothpicks.
Eat the cauliflower.
Tell a terrible joke.
And then see what happens when you stop trying quite so hard to make your child take the bite.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Feed Them Well by Jennifer Anderson
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[00:00:00] Leah Clionsky: Do you wish that your child would eat a vegetable and you just can't get them to do it? That's what we're gonna be talking about today, how to get broccoli into your child's mouth tonight. This is Dr. Clionsky, I'm the host of The Educated Parent podcast, and I am so incredibly excited about my guest today.
[00:00:21] Leah Clionsky: So I am bringing on the wonderful Jennifer Anderson. She is behind the Kids Eat in Color account on Instagram, and I'm gonna let her introduce herself with a little bit more information about what she does
[00:00:34] Jennifer Anderson: Thank you so much for having me. Um, so my name is Jennifer Anderson. I'm a registered dietitian, and I have two kids, and when my first son was nine months old, I stood in the pediatrician's office, and she said, "He's not gaining weight." And at that moment, my life totally shifted. I felt like I had failed.
[00:00:56] Jennifer Anderson: I had just finished my master's degree at Hopkins in public health. I had just finished becoming a registered dietitian. I was all ready. My kid was gonna eat perfectly, and then here I find out, no, my kid's not gonna eat perfectly at all. And so I began this journey of high-calorie diets. My second son came along.
[00:01:16] Jennifer Anderson: He began to show early red flags of extreme picky eating. And so he just got roped right in with his brother. We're doing the best practices. We're working hard. We're doing all the things. And I-- at one point, I'm standing in the kitchen. I'm looking out the window, making this cute little bento lunch for my son to take to preschool, because I knew I had to capture his attention in order for him to eat.
[00:01:42] Jennifer Anderson: And I thought, "You know, I cannot be the only parent having this problem." And so I started posting those little bento lunches with tips and information for parents to help make their feeding journey a little bit easier, and that's where Kids Eating Calories came from. And I learned, and I know now, I'm not alone.
[00:02:02] Jennifer Anderson: There's many, many, many of us struggle on many different levels when it comes to feeding kids.
[00:02:10] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. It is so hard and complicated. There's so much morality involved, and it's wonderful to hear the story of how that account started and how you started really teaching parents from a dietician and mom's perspective, how do we get kids interested in eating foods that are really good for them? I just feel like parents are so stressed about mealtime a lot of the time
[00:02:34] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah. And a lot of times that's dinner, right? We-- Those are the... Dinner is often where we serve vegetables and where we think to kind of pack it in, and we've got this, you know, nutritious meal that we put together. Thing is, we're tired because we've been doing the whole day. The kids are tired. They've had a whole day.
[00:02:56] Jennifer Anderson: They're ready for bed. They are less likely to be hungry at dinner time. And now we've kind of like set... And plus, kids are crazy at dinner time. It's just like that time of day where you're like, "Who are you?" So, and that's the meal that we're putting so much stock in. And so we're, we end up in this really stressed dinner time setup, um, and it's hard.
[00:03:22] Leah Clionsky: Why do you think there's so much morality around vegetables? Like, there's a specific thing about, like, if your child eats broccoli, they are good, right? And if your child-- It's like, ooh, the pillar of childhood success. Luckily, my daughter loves broccoli. Many kids don't. But like, then it's like if your child doesn't like vegetables, then people feel really concerned, and there's, like, a lot of shaming that goes on for parents internally and externally.
[00:03:49] Leah Clionsky: Like, what is it about the
[00:03:50] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah. I mean, if we wanna kind of go way back into what our society thinks of health, I mean, we gotta, like, get out those sociology books, right? There's a long history of what health means and how we use health as a social construct. That gets really wonky really fast. I think, you know, many people in our society value health, right?
[00:04:14] Jennifer Anderson: That's something that a lot of us-- And we want our kids to be healthy, and we associate that with eating fruits and vegetables. So there is kind of this idea of like, well, if your kid isn't eating vegetables, then you don't care about their health, or you must not be able to afford a healthy diet for them, or you're uneducated and therefore maybe you didn't know that your child has a healthy diet.
[00:04:42] Jennifer Anderson: So all this stigma around poverty and, you know, socioeconomic status, all of that can easily feed into our opinion about vegetables, even when we don't realize. We've just kind of like absorbed this. So if suddenly your kid can eat 100 different foods, well, you're really doing great society-wise. But, but you could think about like, what does that mean that your kid could eat 100 foods?
[00:05:11] Jennifer Anderson: It means literally that you had 100 foods, that you knew to give them 100 foods, that you had a store near you, that you had the money. So I think often it can just be a socioeconomic thing. The idea though that we are placing so much morality on food, fine. Let society at large have that idea it-- that we've kind of absorbed, but it's our choice whether we're gonna live that out in our day-to-day.
[00:05:37] Jennifer Anderson: We can decide that. Whether my kids eat vegetables or not, if that is my success measure, I mean, that's... I wanna, I want to feel successful. So if I wanna feel successful and I've putted, put that feeling on what my kids do, that's tricky. That puts us in a really tricky place if we actually wanna feel successful as parents.
[00:06:06] Leah Clionsky: So it's really complicated. It's not just-- Like, there's this idea we all have where, like, you see a piece of broccoli and you think the word healthy, right? Like, 'cause that's what we're culturally... You see a piece of pizza, you think unhealthy, right? That's our, like, cultural conditioning around food, and it's really socioeconomic conditioning around food.
[00:06:23] Leah Clionsky: And it's also a way, yeah, that parents feel, like, like a lot of shame and guilt or, like, this feeling of, like, success. Like, "Well, my child will eat Brussels sprouts, and therefore I'm amazing," versus, "If my child refuses all vegetables, then maybe I'm a terrible mom." And then, and then we pass that along to kids at dinner when we are, like, getting intense, like, "Just try it.
[00:06:48] Leah Clionsky: Just try it. Here's this rule about eating your-"
[00:06:50] Jennifer Anderson: Right. Yeah, it's so true. And again, I like to say your win is when you put the food on the table. Their win is when they eat it. So we c- we really cannot base our parenting wins on what our child is doing. There are days when they're gonna be just, they're, they're gonna be weird. They're gonna be a kid.
[00:07:13] Jennifer Anderson: They're gonna be a normal kid, which means they just hit their friend in the head with a truck. And, and then I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm a bad parent." Well, oh my, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be a bad parent every day because my kids are growing up and they're learning. And so if we are judging our parenting or our feeding on every bite of food that they put in their body, that's just shaky ground, and it's, it's gonna make us anxious.
[00:07:38] Jennifer Anderson: It's gonna make us upset. It's not gonna make us h- like, confident parents who are willing to feed our kids. And not to say nutrition isn't important, because it is important. Like, what our kids eat is important, but I think we need to separate that morality. I think we really, really do. Unless, you know, it's part of our religion or cultural practice that we serve as cer- you serve certain foods or in a certain way or something like that, then it does become tied to morality.
[00:08:10] Jennifer Anderson: But outside of a, uh, outside of something like that, we're just setting ourselves up for failure if, if that's what we're doing, and a, and an unhealthy relationship with food
[00:08:23] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I'm just thinking about how much nobody likes to be forced to do something. Right. So if anyone picks up an energy of like, "You must do this," right? Your immediate reaction to that is, "I don't want it." So if you're sitting there and you're like, "You will eat these carrots," and you're like, "Do you wanna try the carrots?
[00:08:43] Leah Clionsky: The carrots are really good today. Do you see how I cut them up really pretty for you? The carrots are really good." Your child, even if they were open to carrots, is now not open, right? If I said, "Jennifer, you must be on the podcast, it's required," you would have
[00:08:56] Jennifer Anderson: "No, leave me alone." It's so true. The minute you force a kid, the, and they know. They know when you're trying to get them to do that. They know all of your little tricks and things like that. Um, and a lot of kids, I think a lot depends on personality too. They feel that and they're like, "No, I want to be my own person."
[00:09:22] Jennifer Anderson: At the same time, if you turn that around, your kid stands up in their chair that you thought they were nice and tied into, and somehow they get out of it, and they're standing there with their arms crossed, and they're like, "Dinner is gross. I'm not gonna eat this. Yuck." Whatever they're saying, you know? Um, and you say, "Okay, you don't have to eat it.
[00:09:42] Jennifer Anderson: Just sit with us for a few minutes." Suddenly you took all the wind out of their sails, and suddenly we're in a position where they're like, "What? I just have to sit here?" And I have kids who are strong, amazing kids who are gonna do amazing things as long as I don't tell them what to do. They would absolutely not have eaten just about anything if I said, "You have to eat this."
[00:10:10] Jennifer Anderson: But by just saying over and over, "You don't have to eat it. Just sit with us," totally changed it. I mean, the number of times they have not eaten dinner is, I mean, like a handful in 12 years, um, because they're hungry at dinner time. We do need to make sure they're hungry, so that's something to consider.
[00:10:29] Jennifer Anderson: Having a kid come to the meal hungry and ready to eat is a great way to get them to eat dinner.
[00:10:37] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, I think what you're talking about that, like taking that power away by saying, "Yeah, like that's fine. You just have to be here. You don't have to eat this," is really effective. I think it scares parents. I can imagine like a parent response to that being like, "Well, what if they don't eat and then they're really hungry and then they melt down?"
[00:10:54] Leah Clionsky: Or, you know, "What if, and then 15 minutes later I'm feeding them chocolate because they wouldn't eat this?" So I think like it, it, that idea is scary that like,
[00:11:03] Jennifer Anderson: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:04] Leah Clionsky: you know, just like allowing yourself to take a step back
[00:11:07] Jennifer Anderson: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:07] Leah Clionsky: approach food without this like level of intensity does make parents feel very, very, very anxious.
[00:11:14] Leah Clionsky: Again, probably because of all that morality, guilt, and shame built into it, and also like no one wants a hangry child. So I imagine you get pushback right there at that comment, even as it makes complete sense. I imagine people listening to this might be thinking, "Well, that won't work
[00:11:30] Jennifer Anderson: Here's, here's the thing. The more consistent you are, the more your child knows what to expect. When you're a predictable parent, that's something that I think is really key, and they just know They-- your child doesn't really have another option, right? So, you know, in our house, and I've had a kid fall off the growth chart, so I know what it's like to lay in bed at night thinking, "Is my kid gonna be okay?
[00:11:59] Jennifer Anderson: Truly, are they?" Um, what if they don't eat dinner? If they don't eat dinner, we lost a whole opportunity to get calories in, t- in a situation where the cal-- it's, it's a, it's a risky situation. Um, so the thing is, though, my, you know, kid who was falling off the growth chart wasn't picky. He knew, "Hey, this is what's for dinner.
[00:12:26] Jennifer Anderson: I'm not gonna get up and make you a special meal when I just spent time making you a high-calorie dinner, and just because you're saying you're not gonna eat it." That confidence of, "This is what I made. This is what we're gonna have. We're gonna sit here together. You're gonna decide whether to eat it," that confidence comes off, and your child knows.
[00:12:50] Jennifer Anderson: They, they will learn it so fast if it hasn't been your routine. Obviously, if you start that as your routine, routine as soon as your baby starts eating solid foods, that w- that's ideal. But, like, who ever has had an ideal situation across all parenting things? So, but I recommend if you're gonna, like, start this, start it with breakfast so that you, in your mind, you're like, "Oh, then I can make a really substantial snack if they don't eat breakfast, or if they don't eat lunch, I can make another substantial snack, or I can move up the timing."
[00:13:22] Jennifer Anderson: In our house, we've always had a bedtime snack, again, because I needed to make sure my kid had calories. So, we use that last eating opportunity to f- how I thought of it is, like, fill in all the cracks. Like, if there's any space left in that stomach, let's fill it up, and so we do, like, a really high-calorie something.
[00:13:40] Jennifer Anderson: That also gave me a little bit of peace of mind for the dinner, because if he only ate a little bit, again, I do have that last opportunity. We did these, you know, peanut butter banana quote milkshakes, um, that had a ton of calories. So, I think you can kind of work around that, and, you know, the, for the kid who wakes up in the middle of the night, give them a piece of cheese or something very unexciting.
[00:14:08] Jennifer Anderson: They don't wanna be up in the middle of the night hungry. They're not gonna do this for fun. They're not gonna skip dinner thinking, "Oh, then I get that piece of cheese in the middle of the night." That's just not what they're gonna do, and if that happens a couple times, they're gonna figure it out, and obviously you could serve a really big breakfast in the morning.
[00:14:23] Jennifer Anderson: That's something you can also say. "You don't have to eat this. This is the last chance to eat today. We're gonna have a big breakfast in the morning."
[00:14:30] Leah Clionsky: You know, I really like how you're talking about starting off at meals that don't feel as emotionally laden, you know, to maybe start practicing some things if you're anxious. Although now we're gonna switch gears, and we're gonna tell you what you can do tonight to get your child the highest probability of actually consuming a real vegetable at dinner time, which I know will be really exciting for a lot of us.
[00:14:55] Leah Clionsky: So tonight, if I want my son to eat a vegetable, what are three different things I can try?
[00:15:02] Jennifer Anderson: Well, first of all, don't pick like a vegetable that nobody in your house will eat or that they've never seen before. So let's pick a, like a reasonable one that they've kind of been iffy on or something like that.
[00:15:12] Leah Clionsky: Like cauliflower
[00:15:13] Jennifer Anderson: Cauliflower. Okay. Let's say your family eats this. They've seen it before. They're not really cool eating it all the time, but you know, they've tasted it, whatever.
[00:15:23] Jennifer Anderson: You're gonna put a toothpick in it. That's, that's what you're gonna do. You're gonna take a little piece, you're gonna put a toothpick in it, and you're gonna do that for you. If you, if there's more adults in the house, more kids in the house, you're gonna give everybody their toothpick. You're gonna put the cauliflower on a plate.
[00:15:40] Jennifer Anderson: Maybe you're gonna pass the plate around and everybody's gonna stab the, the, the cauliflower, uh, you know, with their plate. And then you're gonna do the second thing, which is model eating that cauliflower. Modeling, which means you're gonna participate in this little game
[00:15:57] Leah Clionsky: Okay. So let me make sure I can imagine steps one and two. So everybody gets cauliflower. Is it all chopped up into little pieces with multiple toothpicks, or is it like every person has one toothpick and this is
[00:16:09] Jennifer Anderson: It could be either. It could be either. I call this toothpick magic. Whether you wanna serve it like an hors d'oeuvre where all the little things have the, the, um, the toothpick in them, whether you wanna give your child the toothpick. My kids would love to have the toothpick because then they can stab things.
[00:16:26] Leah Clionsky: Right?
[00:16:27] Jennifer Anderson: High, high energy, high adventure kids. Maybe your kid is more of like the, "I don't like to stab things, but I do like to pick something up with a toothpick in it," you know, something like that. So know your kid
[00:16:39] Leah Clionsky: So if I'm the parent doing this, I'm like, "Ooh, I'm gonna use this toothpick and I'm gonna try this cauliflower. Ooh, this is fun. I can stab right through it." So I'm sitting there, I'm like maybe even not paying very much
[00:16:51] Jennifer Anderson: Oh, I would ignore your
[00:16:52] Leah Clionsky: to what they are doing. Yeah. So I'm, I'm ignoring, I'm not talking, I'm not like, "Do you wanna stab your cauliflower?"
[00:16:58] Leah Clionsky: Right? I've, I'm not paying attention. I'm just stabbing this. Maybe my other kid is stabbing this, my husband's stabbing it. We're all having fun, and then the picky about vegetables kid is the most likely to also now stab the vegetable
[00:17:10] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah, because who doesn't wanna do it when everybody else at the table is having a fun time with their little stabber?
[00:17:18] Leah Clionsky: That does, and that's so low cost, easy. We can all get a toothpick. That sounds like a lot of fun
[00:17:24] Jennifer Anderson: everybody gets a toothpick, not a big deal. Um, and then you would just be amazed at what people will eat when there's a toothpick in it.
[00:17:33] Leah Clionsky: Really?
[00:17:34] Jennifer Anderson: Even adults, even adults. I w- you know, will sometimes put something out on the table and then put toothpicks out on the table.
[00:17:42] Jennifer Anderson: You-- they just invite action, right? It's like also there's fancy hors d'oeuvres that come on toothpicks and, you know, there's all this like, kind of like societal, like practice around toothpicks. So when a kid has it, they know it's a tool. They also... it's fun, you can play little games with it. And then you modeling, it's so powerful.
[00:18:05] Jennifer Anderson: Like, I know we're gonna talk about three things you can do tonight, but let's say you only did two. These ones together are so powerful, and when we kind of narrate in a non-pressure way what we're doing, we're kind of hammering a lot of things. We're drawing kids' attention to what we're doing, even if they're not really watching us, because why would they wanna do that?
[00:18:28] Jennifer Anderson: Um, but you're like, "Ooh, this cauliflower is crunchy," right? And you just stab it. Um, and you're picking it up, and then you're smelling it, and then, or you're like, "Here, does my cauliflower make any noise? No." Or, or, "Yeah, wow, my cauliflower is telling me that..." you know, and then you make up something funny. You can play along with the food.
[00:18:53] Jennifer Anderson: You're interacting with it, and you're not necessarily inviting your child to interact with it. You are letting them watch you, and then you're gonna eat it. Then you're gonna eat it, and hopefully you made it in such a way that it tastes good. In which case, you're gonna be like, "Oh, wow, this is good."
[00:19:11] Jennifer Anderson: You're not gonna make things up. You're not gonna force it. If playing is not your thing tonight, then don't do it because your kid is gonna pick up on that sort of like fakeness, right? And be like, "Oh, she's just trying to get me to eat the cauliflower." But if you're sincerely having fun with your toothpick, which my guess is you probably would have some fun, then they're gonna pick on that, pick up on that energy.
[00:19:37] Jennifer Anderson: They may or may not try it, and you do need to kind of let the outcome go. Like, maybe they won't try it, and if their, your kid is really picky, then they probably won't. But that doesn't mean that what you've done at that meal hasn't had a really big impact on them.
[00:19:55] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. I also imagine too, it's like, it's the watching other people makes you curious and having a curious child instead of an opposed child who might be willing to try this. That's really interesting. Like I notice too, like with my kids, if one of them is doing something, the other wants in on it, whatever it is.
[00:20:15] Leah Clionsky: And I've act- my-- So my daughter is the vegetable lover. My son is more, um, hesitant about it. But if she's eating a vegetable and clearly excited and she's like, "Ooh, this piece of pepper is really orange and I like this orange pepper," he'll say, "I wanna try orange pepper." Like her excitement about it brings it in and makes him curious, even though if I had just offered him a piece of that pepper without it, it's not as intriguing.
[00:20:41] Leah Clionsky: And I can imagine this toothpick thing bringing it to a whole other level because we are joiners. I love that idea and I love how it takes the stress from the, the parent's responsibility from, "I'm gonna make you eat this," to, "I'm going to eat with a toothpick and enjoy it."
[00:20:57] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Jennifer Anderson: Right?
[00:20:58] Leah Clionsky: Gives you a different focus and it brings, so it brings down like your own like whole emotional vibe around the entire situation.
[00:21:04] Jennifer Anderson: When you have fun, and I think this is the third thing that's kind of-- it feels tangential, but it can have such a big impact, is tell some jokes at dinner. Um, obviously if you have, like, a 1-year-old, that might be a little young, but you can still say some funny things, things that you know are gonna make them laugh.
[00:21:26] Jennifer Anderson: But that, the joke phase, I don't, I don't know. My kids still tell jokes at the table, so is it, like, a 10-year phase? Is it a 15-year phase? I'm not really sure. But when you tell jokes at the table or say things that make your child laugh and make you laugh, you change the whole dynamic. We just went from focusing on vegetables to now focusing on connection.
[00:21:53] Jennifer Anderson: And when we're focused on connection, that brings anxiety down. And when anxiety goes down, we can swallow better, we can chew better, we make more saliva, we-- all sorts of things. Our neck muscles relax so that we can swallow better. A whole bunch of things happen that counteract the stress that comes with seeing foods that you aren't that familiar with, uh, being asked to try foods that maybe you're scared of.
[00:22:25] Jennifer Anderson: The, all the kind of stresses that come to a child at the meal, those re- are reduced when we change the focus and we go to laughing and connecting instead of focused only on the food.
[00:22:41] Leah Clionsky: I love this. I think this is very doable. So tonight we can all get some toothpicks, we can do some toothpick magic, we can eat some vegetables ourselves, and we can laugh. And we can try to make this non-stressful and maybe open the door to our kids being a little bit more curious and willing to step outside their comfort zones with vegetables.
[00:23:02] Leah Clionsky: Jennifer, this is so incredibly helpful. I'm so glad that you're sharing this with all of us. I know you also have a new book out. Can you tell us about it and how we can get it?
[00:23:12] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah. Um, it is called "Feed Them Well: How to Raise Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life." And it really gives parents a framework to work to help their child eat better and to also have a really good relationship with their body. Because we don't want kids who just eat vegetables and don't like their size or shape or, like, overly focused on diet culture, falling into that sort of situation.
[00:23:42] Jennifer Anderson: We really want kids who can live in their bodies, be embodied, and also know how to take care of their bodies, make those decisions about what to eat, learn to eat a variety of foods, learn to have confident family mealtimes. And while as a parent, I think sometimes we worry a lot because we-- there's headlines everywhere and we worry that our kid isn't gonna eat vegetables or whatever it is.
[00:24:11] Jennifer Anderson: We're worried about their health. We lose our confidence. Every headline, every video we see that says, "Oh, you should be doing this with your kid," or, "You should be doing that," we are losing our confidence constantly, and this book is designed to give you your confidence back
[00:24:29] Leah Clionsky: I love that. I love that whole framework for a book. And also, I think the reality is, is that many of us do not know how to feel confident in feeding our own bodies. So it's very hard to teach a skill you were not taught, right? Because of diet culture or just how things were in the '80s and '90s, right? So you're trying to teach something, just like when people are trying to teach emotion regulation and they never learned how to regulate themselves, and then they end up coming to us at Thriving Child Center for help with that.
[00:24:58] Leah Clionsky: So, like this is that kind of guidance. I can't wait to read it. That's
[00:25:03] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah. It's, it's been such a, it's such an amazing project to work on, and I feel like it's everything that I wish I had had at the beginning of feeding my child, and I'm so excited that parents-- And it's baby to t- teen, right? Because we are all gonna encounter those situations where we're like, "What is going on?"
[00:25:29] Jennifer Anderson: Or, "Why is my child," um, you know, well, like, "How do I start solid foods?" Even that to, "Oh my gosh, my, my 10-year-old just came back from school and told me that the girls were skipping lunch, um, because they don't wanna get fat. What do you say to that?" So I'm so excited that parents are actually gonna have the tools, the scripts, the frameworks that they need to take their confidence back and also to empower their kids.
[00:25:57] Leah Clionsky: I love it. Um, all of you can find the link to buy this book in the show notes. I'm incredibly excited about it, and I'm also really excited now about toothpicks.
[00:26:05] Jennifer Anderson: Yeah. Me too. I was like, "Oh man, it's been a while since I've stabbed something with a toothpick."
[00:26:12] Leah Clionsky: we'll just have to send each other pictures of eating with toothpicks later.
[00:26:15] Jennifer Anderson: right. That's right.
[00:26:16] Leah Clionsky: But it was so wonderful having you here. I'm so glad that you were here to share everything with all of us. And for those of you listening to Educated Parent, let me know how your toothpick journey goes. Definitely DM me on Instagram and let me know how it is.
[00:26:32] Leah Clionsky: Thank you so much, and I will talk to you again next week.