umommy: family food

Family Meals: Meal Plan Week of 1/20

, by umommy

Chopsticks: Picky-Eater's Best Friend?

Fact: kids can be picky eaters (I know plenty of adults who are picky eaters too). That hasn't stopped me from introducing my boys to a wide range of flavors. I'm a true believer that we don't need to dumb-down a dish in order for our kids to eat it. We'll go out for dim sum one day, pork tenderloin with rhubarb chutney the next, followed by paella. I'm not going to say my kids eat everything ('cause they don't). But they will almost always try whatever we put in front of them. And more often than not, they are pleasantly surprised it is something they like.

I was particularly excited to see "Little people, big palates," a recent article on boston.com about raising adventurous eaters. Reading this article got me thinking about my own family's dining habits and steps we've taken to avoid becoming a "short-order cook" to my kids (it's enough that I am their personal nose-wiper-chauffeur-butt-wiping-assistant). I have to agree with many of the tips listed in this article:

Introduce new foods often - I'm always trying new recipes/dishes almost every day
Start them young - chop up your food for little ones (your knife skills will improve dramatically)
Don't give up - experts suggest it takes more than 20 times before your kid determines if he/she really likes something

But I do have one 'ace up my sleeve' that has curbed picky-eater syndrome at our house. Chopsticks. The kids love the challenge of using them to pickup morsels of food - from tofu to cheerios to broccoli. There are plenty of kid chopsticks and training chopsticks out there. But then I came across Edison Chopsticks at my last shopping trip to Hmart. They are Ah-mazing. Made for leftys and right-handed eaters, they have finger guides for instant proper positioning (that can be removed once they get a hang of it). They are super cute. Easy-to-clean. Even my two-year old got a hang of them after the first try.

I'm not making any guarantees these chopsticks will make your kids clean their plates of tofu and spinach. But it will make for some laughs... and maybe a bit of a mess the first couple of times. The last food for thought is not to make meal times a battle. We all know how willful some kids can be. And trust me, sometimes a battle of the wills is not worth a piece of broccoli.