Incentives are useful everywhere, but sometimes the correct application is counterintuitive. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal offered the following tips from the experts:
1. Try many times — fifteen or more — to get your kids to eat their vegetables. Most parents give up too soon.
2. Bribing, punishing, and celebrating when the kid eats the vegetables are all counterproductive.
3. "Use tasty toppings."
4. If the kid doesn’t eat the vegetables, grab them from his plate and gobble them up yourself.
5. Eat your own vegetables in great quantity and with great delight.
6. Make mushroom like shrimps
I can personally vouch for “bribing, punishing and celebrating” not working. When I was a kid, my picky-eater reputation was so solidly established that every vegetable turned into a major occasion: “Look, everyone, B.’s eating broccoli!” In the usual teenage way, I found this mortifying—so much so that, when I started actively craving vegetables around age 16-17, I decided to *wait until I got to college*.
This misses the most important step.
Parents: Tell your kids to “eat just one” vegetable. Over time, they will aquire the taste and be more willing to eat a full serving.
Hell, i still don’t like the majority of vegetables i eat. But you cover them in a thick curry or stir fry sauce, and you don’t even taste them.
My two-step process for getting my kids to eat their food:
1. Tell them to eat them.
2. If they don’t, spank and return to step 2.
Works every time!
Also: who are the experts? #1 is good advice, #s 2, 3, and 5 are sort of wise, #4 is just stupid.
What ever happened to “There are starving children in …” who would love to have your vegetables? Use guilt!
Don’t have kids, but my mom’s recounting of how we were never fussy eaters involved my father’s application of #5 not just to the vegetables but also to everything she made. I don’t actually recall my parents ever using the starving kids in China bit… since they were Chinese immigrants it would be too much for their Chinese pride. My dad used guilt in a different way. He always sent the message that enjoying the meals was a way to show appreciation for the effort my mom made on our behalf in preparing them.
Of course, it helps that my mom is the world’s best chinese cook.
1. Serve the vegetables first, while you get the rest of the meal ready.
Food looks and tastes better when you are hungry.
2. Put a plate of cut vegetables and a small dish of ranch dressing inffront of kids and they will eat all the vegetables.
3. Don’t boil them. Ugh. I grew up thinking I hated vegetables cus my parents boiled the brocolli.
I’ll go with the “prepare them properly” argument.
Of course they don’t like over-boiled spinach or whatever. But fry it up with garlic and bacon? Delicious.
A lot of things like carrots are better raw than cooked.
And everything tastes OK in a curry.
Eat your own vegetables in great quantity and with great delight.
at least for me, that worked. i’d eat any and every veggie. my grand dad used to eat veggies with a relish that i wanted to do exactly like him..
Patrick: And everything tastes OK in a curry.
right on!! if any of you get a chance to attend a south indian wedding, don’t miss the wedding feast. there will be an immense amount of veggies (and an incredible number of dishes). ur missing something if you havent experienced it
. coming from a non resident indian, all this is obviously biased, but …
It’s easier if they’re the only thing on their plates.
I think point (5) underscores the point that kids aren’t going to eat their vegetables unless their parents eat them in the first place. I remember once at dinner, with about a serving left in the bowl, my mom passed the bowl over to my dad and me and said “John, you and David finish up the green beans.” My dad then turned to me and said “David, finish up the green beans.”
As a kid, I hated broccoli, brussells sprouts, squash, and sweet potatoes among others, but I did fine with peas, raw carrots, green beans, corn (on or off cob), and regular potatoes (this one helped by my mom’s refusal to acknowledge them as vegetables).
Honestly, I would say get your kids to pick stuff they like or at least tolerate, don’t worry if they don’t like some stuff, and make the stuff they do like. And do the opposite of (1), because the kid is supposed to eat vegetables for his own nourishment, not to make you happy.
Try stuff they don’t like about once a year to see if their tastes change.
If they don’t any vegetables go to a chocolate factory and pretned they are chocolate.
try giving vegetables in small quantities building up to bigger servings kids will get used to it if the parents are persistent. Cut up the vegetables into tiny bits so its easier to chew and swallow so the kids dont gag on the vegetables and pretend to throw up. Avaoid making a big fuss over vegetables I think it would be better to make the child realize that its for their own good so its their personal loss. When it still doesnt work fiber can be obtained from fruits as well so its not a total loss.
im a kid and i hate all veggies! but i really want 2 like them ’cause my mom has a 50×50 garden w/ veggies galore.but i only lik starch veggeies like potatoes and corn cause all else is terrible and if u put somthing on them other than ranch(wen the’re raw)its gross .my mom is west indian so i no all about curry its only good on meat!!!!!!. rite now i don’t feel like going into the individual distgustingness of each veggie.so have ur kids watch veggie tales!!!
VT rocks~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,
I was feeling really depressed coz my partner and I had a massive row about whether or not our kid needs veges…the comments to this post were halrious…and I’m feeling much better
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