5 New Year’s Resolutions Parents Have For Their Picky Eater
If your New Year’s resolutions for your kids sound something like eat more veggies, less processed foods, and fewer mealtime battles, you’re not alone. These are some of the most common goals parents set each January. As the new year approaches, we’re breaking down five popular resolutions and showing how Small Bites’ learnings can extend from the classroom into your kitchen.
1. Eating More Veggies
It may sound counter intuitive but trying new vegetables doesn’t start at the dinner table, it starts with curiosity! Small Bites adventurers explore what different veggies look like, feel like, smell like, taste like, and how they grow. Our Mystery Bag is the perfect tool to introduce this curiosity and fun into eating vegetables, turning the experience from one that’s intimidating to one that’s familiar.
At Home Practice: Introduce a vegetable to your child! Try it out with putting the veggie into a bag they can’t see through and asking them to describe how it feels.
2. Choosing Whole Foods
Rather than focusing on what to avoid, focus on what you can add to meals and snacks at home! Repeated exposure to meals with recognizable, whole ingredients builds up a natural preference for real ingredients!
At Home Practice: Invite kids to help assemble snacks and/or meals that showcase colorful, whole ingredients. Eat the rainbow!
3. Graduate Your Picky Eater
Just like our Veggie Ready program, we want to see all picky eaters graduate into life long adventurous eaters! At the end of the day, picky eating is common and often a normal part of your child’s development. Rather than dwelling on “getting kids to eat” specific foods, emphasize exploration, fun, and independence in the kitchen. By removing pressure and making food exploration playful, kids are more likely to expand their comfort zones over time.
At-Home Practice: Offer new foods alongside familiar favorites and let kids decide what (and how much) to eat. Plus, they may be looking to you for encouragement, loudly enjoy a variety of foods!
4. Eating in Season
Small Bites adventurers learn how foods grow in our soil and on trees, what foods grow depending on the season, and just how tasty in-season ingredients are! Eating seasonally creates a meaningful connection for kids, helping them understand that food doesn’t just appear on grocery store shelves, it comes from real farmers and fields!
At Home Practice: Take a family field trip to a local farmers market or farm stand and explore what’s in season together. Choose one seasonal ingredient to bring home and cook into a simple, yummy recipe that highlights its fresh flavor.
5. Growing Your Kids’ Kitchen Confidence
Confidence is built through practice. Small Bites adventurers measure, explore, discuss, and taste as part of their hands-on food education. These experiences don’t just help create lifelong adventurous eaters, they build confident kids who feel empowered to take what they learn in the kitchen and apply it across all areas.
At-Home Practice: Give kids age-appropriate kitchen tasks and invite them to participate in mealtime preparation. A sense of ownership = building confidence.
At Small Bites Adventure Club, we help kids explore food through fun, hands-on experiences that build curiosity, confidence, and lifelong adventurous eating. We hope you enjoyed exploring these five resolutions for picky eaters. Let us know what you learn from the At-Home Practice points! Happy Tasting!
