6 Strategies to Build Feeding Flexibility  

Let’s face it, mealtimes can feel like an endless chore at baseline. When you have a picky eater, mealtimes can feel all the more daunting and chaotic. We want to suggest 6 tips to help make mealtimes a more meaningful part of your daily routine. With these playful strategies, feeding flexibility can become a game your whole family can look forward to — not just a chore to survive. 

 1. Use your imagination: 

Kids approach their world with their imagination; feeding should be no different! Using our imagination makes tasks feel more approachable, meaningful, and fun. Engaging with food through an imaginative lens can take the pressure off just eating our food. Children with feeding challenges often have sensory sensitivities, anxiety, or limited experience with certain foods. Using imagination reduces stress and encourages sensory exploration without the pressure to eat. We can smell, lick, touch, see, kiss, bite, and spit out our food too! Use our feeding progression chart as a visual guide. We want to keep our kids engaged and interested in the food on the table.  

• Here are some fun examples of how you can use imaginative play with food. The ideas are endless!
  • Carrots become light sabers or logs for a log cabin.
  • Broccoli becomes dinosaur trees or paint brushes (with dressings).
  • Tortillas can become a mask or fly swatter.
  • M&M’s or colored marshmallows can become unicorn poop.
  • Sour Patch Kids are captains of the sweet pepper boats.
  • Include stuffies at the table and have your child “feed” them.
  • Pretending utensils are vehicles.
  • You can make food disappear by being a magician.

2. Change the look of food, get creative:  

When we change the look of our food, it becomes new. Kids will often learn about food in one way: carrots are always cut into sticks, PB&J in triangles, cheese from the red bag, or only bow tie pasta in a sparkle bowl.  Our visual system plays a big role in how we perceive food and whether we decide to engage with it or not. Showing our kids how food can look in different ways helps to broaden their understanding of that food. We can help their nervous and sensory systems to understand that carrots will taste the same if they are in a circle or stick, PB&J will taste the same if it is in triangles or teddy bear shapes, and vanilla yogurt will taste the same if it is white or blue. 

• Here are some fun examples of how you can use imaginative play with food. The ideas are endless!
  • Use food coloring to make yogurt, frosting, cream cheese, ice cream, pudding, etc. into paint.
  • Use cookie cutters to make sandwiches, pizza, pancakes into different shapes.
  • Use toothpicks or tongs instead of forks.
  • Use different foods as spoons: apple slices to scoop nut butters, frozen strawberries to scoop ice cream, carrots to scoop yogurt.
  • Change the orientation of foods: cheese triangles can be flags, raisins can be ants on a log, fruit loops can be boats for peas.

3. Involve your children in meal planning and preparation: 

Encourage children to explore new foods by involving them in meal planning and grocery shopping. Let them browse through cookbooks, recipe magazines, or family recipe collections to select a new meal they would like to try during the week. Talk together about the ingredients, flavors, and cooking methods used in the recipe, and allow them to help make the final decision. Giving children a sense of ownership over the meal can increase their interest in learning about unfamiliar foods in a low-pressure context. When it is time to shop for ingredients, bring them along to the grocery store or farmers’ market and encourage them to choose a new food to include with their planned dinner. Discuss the different sensory properties of what is in your cart, including shape, color, texture, smell, and sounds. Use our exploring food properties handout as a guide to ask questions about the food. Once home, involve them in food preparation tasks such as washing, peeling, stirring, or arranging (making the food on the plate look like a smiley face or rain cloud). Participating in the entire process—from choosing the recipe and shopping for ingredients to helping prepare the meal—can make kids more excited about learning about a wider variety of foods and developing their feeding flexibility. 

4. Grow your own food: 

Planting a garden can help kids become actively involved in every stage of the food-growing process, from planting seeds and watering young sprouts to caring for mature plants and harvesting the final crop. This hands-on experience teaches them where food comes from and helps their sensory systems adapt to learning about food in many different stages. Gardening can also encourage responsibility and curiosity as children observe how plants change and grow over time. When a child plants a tomato seed, watches it sprout, and cares for it throughout the season, the harvest becomes much more meaningful. As a result, a tomato they have grown themselves may taste far more rewarding and satisfying than one purchased from a grocery store or farmer’s market. Gardening fosters a stronger connection to food, encouraging children to explore new fruits and vegetables without pressure. 

5. Experiment: 

• If your kids are hesitant to try different foods, try experimenting with different dips and flavor combinations. Adults often assume certain foods “don’t go together,” but children can have different tastes. For example, just because you think carrots dipped in ketchup, ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, hummus, or even applesauce sounds unusual doesn’t mean your child won’t love it. During sessions, we make ice cream pizza (ice cream spread over a tortilla) and smoothies with fruit loops, spinach, and ice cream. The world is your oyster here!  
  
• Think of food as a blank canvas and make tasting an experiment rather than a battle. Set out a variety of dips—such as yogurt-based dips, guacamole, honey mustard, salsa, cream cheese spreads, or nut butters—and let your child mix and match. You can even create a food lab and dress up as a scientist where everyone rates different combinations and votes on their favorites. 
  
• Don’t stop with dips. Try serving foods in different forms and preparations, as we mentioned above. Some children dislike raw carrots but enjoy them roasted, spiralized into noodles, shredded into salads, blended into smoothies, or baked into muffins. Broccoli might be rejected when steamed but eagerly eaten when roasted with a little Parmesan cheese or served with a favorite dipping sauce. Strawberries may be tried in a smoothie, used as spoons, baked into cakes, or sprinkled on top of waffles.  
  
• The goal isn’t to find the “right” way to serve foods but to discover what works for your family. We know this may change by the hour! A food that is rejected today may become a favorite when paired with a different flavor, texture, or presentation tomorrow. 

6. Make food fun: 

Making food fun is often about turning eating into a playful, creative experience. When food looks surprising, colorful, or interactive, children—and many adults—are often more curious and excited to try it. 

• Create Faces and Characters – Using food to make faces is a classic approach because people naturally notice facial features: 
  • A sandwich with strawberry eyes, a cucumber nose, and a bell pepper smile.  
  • Pancakes with banana slices for eyes and blueberries for pupils.  
  • A bowl of oatmeal decorated as a bear with banana ears and raisin eyes.
  • A pizza topped to resemble a silly monster with olive eyes and pepperoni cheeks.  
  • Rice shaped into a cat face with seaweed whiskers.  
• Arrange Food into Pictures – Instead of serving food separately, combine them into a scene:
  • Broccoli trees growing beside mashed potato mountains.  
  • A sunny sky made from a sliced orange with shredded carrot sun rays.  
  • A beach scene with crackers as sand, blueberries as ocean waves, and banana slices as surfboards.  
  • A garden where cucumber slices are flowers and carrot sticks are stems.  
  • A rocket ship made from toast and fruit.  
• Use Color Patterns – Bright colors naturally attract attention:
  • Arrange fruit in rainbow order: strawberries, oranges, pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, and grapes.  
  • Alternate red and green vegetables in a checkerboard pattern.  
  • Create colorful fruit skewers with repeating color sequences.  
  • Make a “traffic light” snack using strawberries, pineapple, and green grapes.  
• Turn Food into Animals – Animal-shaped food often sparks imagination:
  • A banana dolphin holding a grape.  
  • Apple slices arranged like butterfly wings.  
  • A pear transformed into a hedgehog with toothpick “spikes.”  
  • Celery filled with cream cheese and decorated as a caterpillar.  
  • Hard-boiled eggs decorated as chicks.
• Use Fun Shapes – Changing a food’s shape can make it feel completely different:
  • Cut sandwiches into stars, hearts, dinosaurs, or flowers.  
  • Use cookie cutters on watermelon slices.  
  • Make star-shaped cheese pieces.  
  • Cut cucumbers into flower shapes.  
  • Serve mini pancakes stacked like towers.  
• Build Food Structures – People enjoy constructing things before eating them:
  • Fruit and cheese cubes for building small castles.  
  • Vegetable sticks and hummus for making edible houses.  
  • Mini sandwich blocks that can be stacked into towers.  
  • Crackers, cream cheese, and fruit for creating edible mosaics.  
• Create Food “Stories” – Give the meal a theme or narrative:
  • “Under the Sea” lunch with fish-shaped crackers and blue yogurt.  
  • “Jungle Adventure” plate with animal-shaped foods and green vegetables.  
  • “Space Mission” snacks featuring star-shaped fruit and rocket sandwiches.  
  • “Treasure Hunt” where healthy snacks are hidden among other foods on the plate.  
• Add Interactive Elements – Food becomes more exciting when people can customize it:
  • A taco bar with different toppings.  
  • Yogurt with bowls of fruit, granola, and nuts for decorating.  
  • Mini pizzas that everyone tops themselves.  
  • Fruit kabobs assembled at the table.  
  • Rice bowls where each ingredient is arranged separately and mixed by the eater.  
• Use Repetition and Symmetry – Patterns can make a plate visually satisfying:
  • Alternate strawberry and banana slices in a circle.  
  • Arrange cucumber slices like flower petals around a dip.  
  • Create a spiral with different colored fruits.  
  • Make rows of vegetables organized by color.  
• Add Surprises – A small unexpected element can make food memorable:
  • A smiley face hidden beneath a layer of fruit.  
  • A sandwich cut to reveal a colorful filling pattern.  
  • Pancakes stacked with fruit hidden between layers.  
  • A muffin tin lunch where each compartment contains a different colorful snack. 

The goal isn’t to make every meal elaborate. Even a simple touch—a smiley face, a rainbow pattern, or an animal shape—can transform an ordinary plate into something that invites curiosity and makes eating more enjoyable. At the end of the day, our kids learn through play. Having fun with the process and creating positive experiences around food is a great way to reframe mealtime for your kids – and to encourage them to try new things. So, put on your creative hat and have some fun!   

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