Learning to like new foods is tough. It can be scary for children. It can be stressful for them. It can be overwhelming.

When it feels like it’s too much of a challenge to move beyond preferred foods, the foods that children know and are comfortable eating, it can help to remember that offering variety doesn’t always need to mean different and new foods. It can simply be making changes to what they already know.

By switching up what they’re already familiar with, we can introduce the idea of different within safe boundaries. We can get them used to the idea of new and different with small and gentle steps.

That might be:

• offering different types of bread products instead of the bread they’re used to
• cutting the carrots into sticks instead of circles
• swapping a bought pizza for a homemade one every other time you have pizza
• changing the brand you buy
• switching the shape, for example, a nugget to a strip
• introducing a different flavour or texture – chicken sausage instead of pork or a pork sausage with herbs.

How can you introduce variety with the foods your child is already eating? Let me know if you need help exploring this.