Making mealtime fun

We’re quite lucky to have two children who aren’t overly fussy about their food. We sometimes get frustrated with Rosemary’s changing tastes, but she has a wide experience of food and will try most things – though her most common epithet is ‘Yucky’. She has recently started clarifying that something is yucky for her and talks about people having different tastes and is getting better at saying ‘I don’t like it, myself,’ rather than just ‘It’s yucky,’ which is good. Eleanor will try pretty much everything and likes most of it. For most meals there is one or two particular items that she’ll devour and want more of (tonight it was couscous and prawns) and other things that she’ll nibble at and then leave on her plate (or throw to the dog – which she is not supposed to do).

Because we don’t have too many big problems about eating, it’s quite rare for me to consider doing something innovative to make mealtimes a bit more fun (beyond sticking some fancy pasta shapes in the minestrone). The other day I laid out two plates of food in a pretty (well I thought so) pattern (salad – lettuce in the middle with cucumber, tomatoes and green pepper around, in a symmetrical pattern; slices of quiche, around the outside with slices of cheese in between and egg mayonnaise in the middle). I didn’t really have any particular aim in doing so, except that I’d got some nice plates from my mum recently and hadn’t used them yet. Probably I was aiming for getting Chris to say ‘Oooh, very pretty,’ or something along those lines. But, as it turned out, Rosemary was really impressed with how pretty the pattern was and both the girls enjoyed being able to pick what they wanted and leave what they didn’t (for the record, Rosemary had cucumber, tomato, cheese and egg mayonnaise and Eleanor tried everything but had seconds and thirds of egg mayonnaise, tomato and cheese).

And then Rosemary decided to make a face with the food and it struck me that I have never ever done this for them. It’s the sort of thing I see all over the place as a means of persuading recalcitrant children to eat their vegetables (or just any food that isn’t chocolate or crisps), or just of making dinnertime a bit more exciting, but I have never done it myself. Poor Rosemary had to make her own food face. (In case you were wondering, she did get me to eat the hair – she really doesn’t like lettuce.)

Do you have problem eaters and, if so, what have you tried to help them enjoy food more? Do you do anything to make mealtimes fun or is it just a case (as ours tend to be) of sitting down and eating, while maybe having a chat about what happened that day? Do you ever make food faces or patterns?