We had a great deal of success with Ellyn Satter’s books.
I have a daughter that was the same way. My oldest will eat ANYTHING (escargot, spinach, sushi, artichokes, etc.). My youngest was raised exactly the same way, and she’d only eat certain things.
Your 3 year old might be a little too young for this, but one thing we did that seemed to help immensely was getting her involved with the cooking. We started with “make your own pizza night,” and then moved to “make your own taco night.” She started with just pepperoni and cheese on the pizza, and just cheese on the tacos, but eventually she started trying new things. Now she eats tacos with lettuce, tomato, meat, cheese, and black olives. Even if she’s just pouring a can of green beans into a pot or stirring the pasta (supervised, of course), she always had a responsibility. And dinner she’d usually say something like, “Mommy, do you like the green beans I made?”
One thing we were guilty of, was making something “special” for my daughter who didn’t eat. We’re having fish tonight? I’d heat her up some chicken nuggets in the oven. We stopped that, and have incorporated a “one bite rule.” She has to eat at least one bite of everything prepared, whether she likes it or not. She’s taken bites of things she was SURE she was going to hate, and then started laughing afterwards when she discovered she actually liked it.
I was an extremely picky eater as a child. I would have found your suggested treatment embarrassing, frustrating, and probably condescending. I would have felt shame at the fact that my failure to eat normally (oh, I wanted to just be able to fit in like my brothers, but the phobia/aversion was too great) was now an issue of morality/maturity. In other words, you just may make the kid feel like shit.
Some kids really are quite sensitive to food textures, etc. so it may not be entirely a control issue, and I do think it’s a good idea to get him checked out. But on the whole, I’m all for the “serve cheerfully, don’t cajole or obsess, take it away after 30 minutes, and don’t give in” method.
As a word of warning, my niece is one of the pickiest kids you will ever meet. Her parents have tried to be firm, but they’ve also cajoled too much IMO. I have often seen her vomit on purpose in order to get out of eating, even things she likes just fine. I haven’t walked in their shoes, so I try not to judge, but I do think if they hadn’t been so intense about trying to get her to eat all the time, she wouldn’t have stayed so difficult for so long.
And of course, if he doesn’t eat any dinner, he shouldn’t get any dessert…that can be a bit tricky when you’re at a birthday party or something.
There is no tactic that is guaranteed to work on every kid, or, if there is, we haven’t figured out what it is yet. You’re going to have to take your kid’s temperament and exact situation into account when trying to fix this problem. If what you’re trying is clearly making things worse and making mealtimes more stressful, don’t be stubborn, try something else.
Agreed. I didn’t mean to come off so harsh, I guess I just had an emotional flashback.
My mother said that she was “not going to cook more than one dinner each night”. So that meant as kids we either ate what she cooked, or we had to make something else for ourself. And as a little kid, there’s only so many things you can fix yourself: peanut butter & jelly sandwich, hard boiled egg, or whatever leftovers were in the refrigerator.
But it seemed to work. We never starved, never had nutritional deficiencies (most of the stuff we could fix was reasonably balanced for one meal), and never ended up with picky food tastes as adults. We did learn how tedious it was to have to fix your own meal each time, and how boring peanut butter sandwiches can be. And that doing so did NOT get you a lot of attention. Plus it helped us all develop some basic cooking skills starting at a young age – something that was a real advantage when we went off to college.
“When I first went away to college, I had the weirdest sensation in my stomach all the time. I finally realized it was the absence of indigestion.”
That sounds terrible. But I’m curious, what are the 5 things? Is he disgusted by the other things that he won’t eat (ie. he’ll vomit) or just simply refused to eat it?
My mother solved the picky eater problem by having 6 kids in the house. Seriously, nobody in the world who is not actually getting a salary for it has the energy to make special meals for 6 kids. In the end she settled for planning a meal which was likely to be most popular with each kid one day a week (my day was Tuesday) and pointing refusniks to the fruit bowl.
I expect one of my siblings would have cleared my plate for me long before an hour was up.
Make sure you have a realistic idea of how much he should be eating. A three-year-old is smaller than an adult, and does not need to eat as much food as an adult. One tablespoon of each food per year of age is a reasonable portion size, or around 1/4 to 1/3 of an adult portion size. And that is 1/4 to 1/3 of the portion that an adult is supposed to eat, not 1/4 to 1/3 of the oversize portions that a lot of Americans actually eat.
Make sure he’s not filling up on milk or juice before or at dinner.
Don’t try to make him “clean his plate”. That will set him up for overeating problems later in life. You don’t want to teach him to eat when he’s not hungry. That’s not a good habit to have in a first-world country today.
Yeah, we only have 3, but still, it’s a lot tougher to be a picky eater when the general response to “Ew, I don’t want to eat that” is a chorus of two other people saying, “Yay, more for me!” and making a stab for your plate.
My nephew was like this at three. He seemed rather small and I wished he would show more interest in his food. Instead he usually would kneel sideways in the chair and direct his attention at anything other than eating. In the end, though, he outgrew it and was fine.
You do realize that shrooms are one of the more common allergens?
They may not go to the point of anaphylaxis like I do - but they could actually be allergic to it.
This is a lot better than what happened to me when I was a kid. I got beat for not eating, either a belt, extension cord, stiff wire, etc… now I eat way too much. Just remember you are the parent and you really do have the capacity to outwit a 3 year old. I promise. 
I grew up with the “this what we’re eating, and it’s all there is” rule. I’m now an adventurous eater and I largely approve of what my parents did. However, I still remember how much some things bothered me. The most dramatic one was cooked tomatoes that weren’t perfectly smooth. The sliminess of them always forced me to suppress my gag reflex as I swallowed. I think that I would have done fine if I only had to eat a taste each time. If your kid is verbal enough, I’d see if he can tell you what is bothering him. You may be able to skip the foods that are really torture while nevertheless insisting that he eat most things.
We have 2 selective eaters. We finally found a solution, after years of struggle.
Dessert.
Last year when they were 3 and 6, we announced to them that we had new rules for dinner.
#1: Every night we’d be having dessert (we literally never had it at dinner before that, unless it was a birthday).
#2: Dinner and dessert are a package deal; no dinner, no dessert.
#3: You can choose to have cereal instead.
Then for the first week, I made only things that they enjoy eating, and they got dessert every night. Second week I made only the things they enjoyed eating plus 2 leaves of salad. Third week I started mixing in bigger challenges, more interesting foods, a bit more salad.
We added on some sub-clauses - you have to try a real bite of new foods, no dessert on pizza night, mom can veto cereal sometimes if she thinks you are just being lazy.
And it worked! Now, a year later, they’ll eat a 1/2 cup of salad and eat everything on their plates every dinner, completely matter-of-fact. They choose cereal maybe one night a week, not much more.
There are a few things that they are allowed to opt-out of; they both hate mashed potatos, the boy doesn’t eat tomatoes, stuff like that. They aren’t asked to eat those things, because hey we all hate something.
Oh and dessert each night is 2 tablespoons of vanilla ice cream. Not huge slabs of cake or anything. I feel ok about it; I think it teaches portion size and moderation.
I stand in awe of your amazing plan. That is brilliant. Organized, reasonable, gentle. I love it.
I was not as tough as my parents were but I only cooked one meal which was usually meat, chicken, or fish with a vegetable and a starch. No dessert if dinner was not eaten. I also devised a plan that worked really well of holding off dinner until chores and homework were done. This made them do their homework and chores before going out to play and dinner time. They were good and tired and hungry at dinner time and wolfed the food down. My kids eat anything within reason. I limited snacks to a fruit or a handful of nuts after school. I kept the junk food out of the house as much as possible. They will always find it or I would hide it in the oven and then burn it while preheating the oven!
As said above you are going to have to undo some bad training and it will be tough for a while but ultimately make you life a lot easier. There is nothing worse then a picky eater.
It would be nice if letting him go hungry would make him eat. Unfortunately it really doesn’t work this way for most toddlers. Similarly, letting them get really tired does not lead to them going peacefully to sleep.