How Can I Get My 4-Year-Old To Eat Vegetables?

So often, picky eating challenges become a power-struggle. Your child won’t touch it because mom is pushing it!

So, how do you get your child to eats healthy foods while avoiding the struggle?

Don’t make threats you can’t follow through with. For example, the warning, “You’re going to sit here until your green beans are gone!” will not work. Your child will sit there all night until at some point, you will have to give in so you can put her to bed. A better option is to let her know she can’t have a second helping of fruit (or dessert), until she’s eaten some vegetables. If she doesn’t eat the veges, she doesn’t get more fruit. Easy as that, no emotions, no arguments. At the end of the meal, you just get her down from the table and she’s done.

A fun way to encourage your child to eat foods they don’t like and avoid the power-struggle is to require them to take one “no thank you bite” for every year of age. A 4-year-old will be required to take 4 “no thank you bites” of her green beans. I’ve found most kids play-along, and the fun thing is that by the time they are 8 or 9 years of age, they are asking for seconds to get all of their “no thank you bites” in!