Let the Picky Eater Pretend to Be the Judge of the Cooking Show
Getting a picky young eater to try different dishes can be a long battle. Parents of fastidious eaters can find many tips and tricks to help their kids become more adventurous about their food. Some tactics work, some work for a while, and some don’t work at all. However, if your kids enjoy cooking shows – or if they like to play well from time to time, you can try making them the judges of your show at dinner time.
I wish I had thought about it when my son was younger, but the credit for this idea goes to actor and comedian Jake Johnson, who recently shared it on The Kelly Clarkson Show :
“Before I had kids, I just didn’t cook very much,” Johnson tells Clarkson. “So I’ll do something really durable, and after the bite, they’ll say,“ I’ll take the cereal instead. ” So we’ve watched a lot of cooking shows and so my way of making cooking work with my kids is more of them than themselves, when I present food to them, they are the judges on the show. .. Suddenly they eat all the food because they are the judges. So they say, ‘I like the texture, but I don’t like the cheese in the quesadilla.’
His kids will then eat extra morsels, trying to figure out which aspects of nutrition are working and which can be improved.
Plus, since his kids (twins) are only six years old, Johnson says they’ve struggled to use the numbered ranking system correctly. So they created a new grading system based on the level of “sauce” they put on a dish. If they really like something, they will consider it “extra sauce”.