When All Else Fails

If the approaches above don't help, there's still much you can do to improve even ingrained pickiness. Dr. Wilkoff suggests parents try a very specific approach but warns that picky eating is a normal behavior that almost every child will exhibit sometime during his first six years, and while you can improve it, you probably won't cure it. You can, however, make the family meal more enjoyable. "It's only in a relaxed atmosphere that your fussy eater is likely to become more adventurous," Wilkoff says.

If you're going to try this method, you'll need to stay strong no matter how loudly your picky eater whines and wails during the initial adjustment period. The basics of his approach:

Stop being a short-order cook. A typical dinner at Anne Whisnant's house in Chapel Hill, NC, used to involve preparing two, and sometimes three, different meals. "I'd make dinner for my husband and myself, then make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Evan, who's 2 1/2," she says. "But often, even if he had requested PB&J, he'd screech for something else when he sat down, and we'd give it to him."

Dr. Wilkoff's advice: "Stop catering to your child just so you can see him eat." Your job as a parent is to present a selection of healthy foods in a pleasant environment. So offer a nutritious main dish, vegetable, starch, and bread and let your child choose from what's available.

The first (and probably second and third) time you attempt this, expect a major fit. But don't waver. The objections will continue until it's clear you're serious about the new regimen. "Calmly explain that he doesn't have to eat, but this will be his last chance for the evening," says Dr. Wilkoff. "Then stand firm." If he doesn't eat at all? "It won't kill him. He'll make up for it the next morning. The next evening, he'll be more open to what's on the table."

Serve appropriate portions of loved and loathed foods. Let's say you're dishing up spaghetti and meatballs, which your child likes, along with peas, which she dislikes or has never even tried. Give her a tiny portion of peas and a portion of pasta that's slightly on the small side so she doesn't totally fill up. Then, no seconds of anything until she's cleaned her plate, suggests Dr. Wilkoff. You're not trying to get her to join the old "clean plate club," just keeping her from overdosing on one food to the exclusion of others. And if you keep the portion of the new food quite small, say, to five peas, you increase the chances that she'll try to finish the peas in order to get seconds of spaghetti.

Don't let meals go on ad nauseam. "If your child is going to eat anything, it's going to be in the first 20 minutes," says Dr. Wilkoff. There's no point in keeping him at the table to try to get him to eat more.

Bite your tongue. None of these techniques will work unless you stop putting pressure on your child. That means no more "If you don't eat your lima beans, you can't have dessert," "If you don't finish your meat loaf, you'll never grow up to be big and strong," or that old standby, "Children are starving in India!"

"No one likes to be pressured," says Dr. Wilkoff. "The typical human response is to be contrary. All you're going to achieve is to make your child feel angry or guilty." And there should be no discussions about eating, especially during meals. If you need to review the rules, do it away from the table and don't lecture.

Does all this really work? Whisnant decided she'd had enough of short-order cooking and unpleasant meals. "Evan was getting worse. We were down to six foods and no vegetables, and he'd never try anything new," she recalls. "So at dinner, we started serving the same things to everyone  -- but not the same portion size. We made sure that there was at least one thing that Evan really liked, such as peanut butter on crackers, which we'd have some of too. He'd get a normal portion of that, along with minuscule portions of new foods, including our main dish. And we stopped talking about food at the table."

The first few days, Evan left all the new foods on his plate. But the next night, he tried a bite of kale. "We were shocked!" says Whisnant. "After that, it was ravioli, pumpkin pancakes, grits, and carrots in the course of just a few weeks. And there's no more whining or screeching."

It was a longer haul with my daughter, Allison, who had no trouble expressing her objections, loudly and at length, to our new routine. She ate worse for the first week, and I almost called it quits. But I was so sick of our constant bickering over food that I decided to stick it out for one more week. As it turned out, I didn't have to. The next night, I served dinner, and Allison proceeded to eat it all, including a small serving of rice, a new food for her. It helped that she wanted to tell me all about something she'd done at school that day  -- and that I dug my nails into my palms so I wouldn't say anything about the meal and break the spell. But, as I learned in the days that followed, there was no doubt that my picky eater was becoming less picky, meals were slowly but surely becoming more pleasant, and my family had finally reached a truce in the food wars.

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