We serve no vegetables at our house, because Spike does not like vegetables.
We do serve broccoli, corn, green beans, carrots, and peas, which Spike does like. Therefore they are not vegetables.
I love three-year-old logic.
This has been the biggest success tactic for us. My child is big on growing up and being different as she gets older. She likes carrots now because she’s 8–she didn’t like them when she was 7, of course.
Yours is too young for this yet but when she gets older you can try what we do. We go through a cookbook or cooking magazine each week to plan the menu for the week. The kid has to pick out one dish to include for a meal each day and only one can be a dessert and only one can be a protein main course. The rest, she must choose a fruit or veggie-based side. Since she gets to choose and we vary the books used, she has tried some new foods that she normally wouldn’t try.
One way I get some veggies into my kid is to take veggies that are approaching their discard date and throw them on a roasting pan with some onions, garlic and a little olive oil. After they are roasted, I puree them with some cream cheese and use it as a dip for the raw veggies she will eat or I spread it on some tortillas and roll them up with some ham or turkey for quick lunches.
Fortunately, the Soph liked vegetables from babyhood (especially broccoli) so this hasn’t been a long-term issue. Now she ocassionally asks for meatless meals (which I can’t understand, but whatever).
She did go through a phase where she didn’t want them, whereupon our attitude was “You want the hamburger? Eat the beans, kiddo. Or go to bed hungry, we don’t care. It’s not as if you’re going to starve if you miss a meal.”
Your pediatrician is right on target. Remember that you are also feeding her vitamins and fruits, and she is getting adequate nutrition right now. Your goal, then, is not to get vegetables into her today, but to get her to enjoy them in the long-term, so that she will continue to eat a balanced and varied diet when she is out from under your control. Forcing her to eat them, or even cajoling her or making dessert dependent on them, does not really move toward that goal.
I really like this book, which I usually come in to recommend when people post about kid feeding issues. It is moderate and realistic, and focused on long-term outcomes.
The actual goal is for her to have a good and healthy attitude toward food. That includes but is not limited to eating vegetables.
Some things to do:
Get her to help you cook. Kids are more willing to eat stuff if they helped cook it. And cooking is a skill she’ll need as an adult.
Try cooking vegetables in some different ways. If you’ve only tried giving her canned peas, try frozen or fresh peas. Find some new recipes for familiar vegetables (there are many of these available online, and public libraries have cookbooks). I won’t eat canned peas (they’re mushy and nasty), but I like frozen peas.
Think of fun new names for vegetable dishes. Kids are often more willing to eat “X-Ray Vision Carrots” than just carrots. Don’t laugh or think this is limited to kids- adults are more willing to eat polenta than cornmeal mush, too.
Dips are more fun than sauces, for some reason. They just are. Obviously you want to find dips that aren’t too full of fat, sugar, or salt, but don’t be afraid to use a little fat or salt to make a vegetable palatable. Don’t be a diet perfectionist. Fat, salt, and sugar are not poisons that have to be avoided in any amount. They’re OK as long as you don’t eat too much of them.
Offer vegetables more than once. Maybe s/he was just having a bad day the last time you offered it, and didn’t feel like trying anything new. We all have days like that.
You may need to do this, especially if your child has a shy personality. Also, if you’re dealing with a shy kid, the kid may not appreciate you making a big deal out of him/her eating a vegetable that s/he didn’t before. You may need to offer it and say nothing, whether or not the kid eats it. OTOH, if your kid enjoys being the center of attention, it might be good to make a big deal out of him/her eating a new vegetable. One size doesn’t fit all here, and what’s a reward to one kid might be a punishment to another.
Good idea! (Personally, I think this shows why some chefs get so upset when people use salt or pepper on food- they want to keep ownership of the food, rather than turn it over to the person who’s eating it) A salt-free seasoning like Mrs. Dash or lemon pepper might also work for this.
Some things that will not help:
Insisting that she clean her plate. This teaches her to keep eating when she’s not hungry, which is not something anyone in a developed country today needs to do.
Making her sit at the table until she finishes her vegetables. This just makes family dinners a power struggle, which isn’t pleasant for anybody there.
I’d be wary of making dessert a reward for eating one’s vegetables, too. Thinking “I did something good, I deserve something sweet” can lead to weight problems.
This is true, although I was casting the goal in terms of the question. But I think we’re aiming at the same thing, as evidenced by the bolded part of my quote.
Growing up, my vision of spinach was cooked spinach, the kind of crap Popeye always ate. My parents never really foisted on me, so I never had a chance to refuse it, but I didn’t want to eat the green mushy stuff.
Then one night we were out at dinner at a nice restaurant where one of the sides was gently roasted spinach. “You mean…it’s just leaves? Like lettuce? Not nasty gunk? AUMNOMNOMNOM” I’ve liked it ever since.
One more thing I thought of - when we started eating as a family, my son got more adventurous with his food choices. It’s really hard sometimes to make sure you all sit down together, especially if you both work. Plus, a 20-month old isn’t exactly the most constant dinner companion, but it’s good for her to see you enjoying your veggies, too.
I wish we’d started sitting down as a family sooner with our son. There are no ill effects, but we could’ve avoiding a lot of tension had we started it sooner, and I probably could’ve gotten our son eating what we were sooner (I was a line-item cook for a long time, until I decided we’d all eat at the same time).
I used to get so mad that I had to prep and clean for two meals - his and ours. And I was exhausted by the time my husband and I were done with dinner. Now, whenever we can, everyone sits down together, even the 11-month old. We’ve been doing this since a couple of weeks after our daughter came home from the hospital. She never lasts the full meal, but she does eat what we do (in addition to her baby food, which she’s rapidly leaving behind) and I’ve got no problem letting her crawl around on the floor while we finish. Same for our son - if he’s done, as long as he asks before he leaves and chews his food before he gets down, he’s not required to stay at the table. New foods require a “no thank you” bite and if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to eat it.
Hell, I’m gonna start doing this m’self, and there aren’t any shorties in our household. Thanks for the tip!
“Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work much better with getting kids to have good eating habits than it does with anything else. If you want them to be willing to try new foods, you and your spouse should be willing to try new foods.
Here’s a roasted carrot recipe that my then-three-year-old niece liked when I made it at Thanksgiving:
Spray a Pyrex glass dish with cooking spray. Pour baby carrots from a bag into the dish. Pour a little olive oil and honey over them, and sprinkle with salt (preferably kosher) and cinnamon. Mix them up with a spoon so that the oil, honey, salt, and cinnamon are evenly distributed. Roast them in a 400 degree F (about 200 C, for you metric nuts) oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until tender.
Maybe giving the child some control might help. Let him/her pick out a veggie when you go shopping. Let them peel and cut them up, with careful supervision of course. Make sure to mention how great the veggies she/he made are.
Vegetables are not a punishment. Don’t use them in any way that might suggest that they are. Fruit for dessert, as opposed to brownies, ice cream, or something like that, is not a punishment either.
Don’t tell your kid that vegetables are yucky, or that vegetables are not kid food (unless you want to emphasize how grown-up your kid is for eating vegetables). He or she will get that message from lots of other places; s/he doesn’t need to hear it from you.
A day when you or your spouse are frustrated or angry, or your kid is cranky, is probably not the best day to introduce a new food. Better to do it when everybody’s relatively calm and happy.
If you’re frustrated or unhappy, try not to take it out on your kid at the dinner table. You can avoid taking it out on your boss, the technique of not taking it out on your kid is exactly the same. You should try to make family dinner time a positive experience, or at least not a negative one. It’s not the time for talking about anybody’s faults. Negative talk can cause stress, stress can cause nausea, and nausea associated with eating a particular food is well-known to cause food aversions. That’s not what you’re after.
As others have said, raw veggies is the way to go. Preferably arranged in separate bowls. We had great trouble getting our son to eat veggies until we tried the “assemble your own salad”-approach. I know others who have had the same experience.
It’s not brocolli, it’s Dinosaur Trees. 
See the mighty brontosaurus crunch through a whole forest! Crunch, Munch!
Dinosaur trees, monkey trees, tomayto, tomahto.
Not for all kids. I was the oddball- I wouldn’t eat raw fruits or vegetables. I ate cooked ones, though, and I was OK nutritionally. The idea is to get the kid to eat a balanced diet, not to force him or her to eat everything, or to eat whatever you put in front of him/her. Your kid is a human being, and, like all human beings, will have some food dislikes.
“Eat what’s put in front of you, and clean your plate” isn’t really a healthy attitude toward food in today’s world. It’s not the approach you want your kid taking when s/he grows up and goes to a restaurant, and has a 1400±calorie plate of pasta or a 1000±calorie salad put in front of him/her (several such dishes are available from chain restaurants). If your kid eats whatever you tell him or her to, in whatever quantity you say, that makes things easier for you in the short term, but can cause weight problems in the long term. And cleaning your plate is not easy to unlearn. I know, I’m trying.
I totally agree - forcing a kid to eat will bring nothing good, quite often the opposite. My point was simply that many kids love veggies - raw or cooked - but they don’t like to eat them when they are mixed with other foods. Separate bowls allow them to pick what they want, and they often want to eat at least some of the things presented to them. If a kid chooses to not eat broccoli or cucumber or whatever for a while it’s no big deal at all - in most cases they’ll just pick something else from what’s on display that day.
Serving foods separately is a great idea. It’s much easier for the people who want them together to mix them themselves than for the people who want them separate to pick them apart. My family did this with mac & cheese, tuna, and peas. My mom and sister liked the peas mixed in with everything else. I would mix the mac & cheese and the tuna, but the peas had to be separate. You get the same nutrition from one pile of mac & cheese and one of peas that you get from a big pile of mac & cheese with peas.
Allowing children to “discover things on their own” is the preferred method of course. But there is also nothing wrong with a little gentle guiding and trickery. That’s not the same thing as “forcing” things upon a child, but often kids can get an idea in their heads about certain items and won’t allow reality to sway them, and using psychology, such as an occasional “eat your veggies, so you can have dessert”(and then for THAT SPECIFIC mini-lesson alone, and not as a common practice, have something particularly savory for dessert) is not the same as “forcing” them. It can act as a break for the mental block a kid may have, so that they try the thing (be it a food, or an activity) and they go “OH! So THAT’S what that’s like” after they give it an HONEST try. Which oftentimes they won’t, when left to their own devices.
My little sister (now 47), would do this,when asked to try something, she’d take about a pinhead sized helping on a spoon, and touch it to her tongue (getting about a half a molecule) and then say “NOPE, DON’T LIKE IT,” without ever having given the item a fair chance. However, the times my mom made dessert contingent upon eating something (and she never forced huge helpings or made us “clean our plates”), we’d find that she would give it a fair shot.
Just a thought.
If I don’t have a healthy desert up my sleeve, I have one of two lines. The first is, “Well, if you’re not hungry enough for dinner, then you’re not hungry enough for desert!” That works for the first 4 years. Then, when the kid sees the illogic of it (I admit, I may not be hungry for peas, but I sure am hungry for ice cream!) they’re old enough for the second one: “Ice cream really isn’t healthy. It’s okay to have treats, but we need to eat our healthy food first so our bodies are strong enough to handle the unhealthy food. I’m going to finish my peas so I can have some ice cream!” The logic of this (which is more true) coupled with the example I’m setting usually makes the kid decide to finish her peas so she can have ice cream, too. But I don’t actually have to tell her she must and be the bad guy for her to resist.
My son tried that, so the rule became “Three bites - one to choke down, one to taste and one to decide.”