Food Menu- Increase Child’s Food Selection through Choice

When my son was two years old, he had five foods in his diet. He would eat bars (granola with chocolate chip and marshmallows), bananas, applesauce, chicken nuggets, and grilled chicken. If I tried to offer him other foods, he would push them away and refuse to eat them. Today after three years of therapy, he has a wide range of foods that he will eat. He will also always try a new food now before he says it is yucky. What helped us overcome his feeding issues? Me letting go and giving him control of his eating. That does not mean that I opened a pantry and said have at it. We wouldn’t have changed one thing doing that. I actually made a menu with his therapist for breakfast, snack, lunch, and dinner. On the menu, we put the foods he liked along with foods he hadn’t tried. Each meal, he could pick three items to eat. Each menu included 10 items and included a main dish, side dish, and a drink. I had a picture with each word since my son could not read. Here is an example of one menu (sorry pictures wouldn't post):

Breakfast menu

waffle	pancakes
eggs	fruit
cereal	Juice box
bacon	milk
bar	Orange juice

 

Every four months we would change the items on the menu. Now that he is older and has a wide range of foods, he helps me plan the family menu for the week. On Sunday, we put together our week menu. It is so nice to now have everyone eating the same thing.

Another thing we did to make eating fun was play a game while eating. My son’s favorite games to this day are “Spin or Roll a Bite”. You play using a dice or spinner. The child rolls or spins to see how many bites he or she needs to take. Everyone at our family table plays and has fun.

The great news is once my son started eating more, he was able to sleep better too. I hope these ideas work for you too. They did wonders for us!