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The dinner table is no place to be doing battle with your children. However, picky eating in children is very common and something most parents will encounter at some point.

In an ideal world a parent will have introduced many different foods to their child when they were toddlers or being weaned from their milk. Finger foods are a great way to do this and you can experiment by giving different toppings to toast and, as the child gets a little older, raw vegetables as a snack. At this age it’s not important to insist your child sit at the table at a set time, the diversity of the food the child encounters is the important thing. But you should still encourage your child to sit down with you at the table when you have your own family meals, so the child comes to understand that this is a practice that will continue in your household.

Of course life isn’t always like that and a busy working mum may find it hard to give a child the food she would like to, simply because of time restraints. If you are past the toddler stage and have a picky eater on your hands, there are still measures you can take to ease them into the trying of a wider variety of foods. It’s worth pointing out also, that some children who were given many different foods as a very young child will still go on to be picky eaters, usually due to peer pressure, food fads and the intense advertising of fast food children are exposed to.

Start by taking the decision to make less of your child’s favourite foods if they are unhealthy, such as pizza and burgers. These foods should be saved for treats and should not be seen as regular meals. This is a gradual process and something a parent needs to stick to. Offer parts of these foods on the plate, along with other foods you can all eat as a family. For example, you could still serve a portion of chips, but do so along with healthier foods like salads and meat or fish. Your child might refuse to eat this at first, but you need to persevere.

If you find you are cooking one meal for yourselves and something different for your picky eater, always put a portion of whatever the family is having on the plate of the child and ask them to try it. One mouthful will do, and the child should be praised and encouraged when they try something new, although not rewarded. You may need to persist with this, but in offering a variety of different foods in this way you should find your child will try at least some of them.

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