A Neat Trick to Get Your Child to Eat (and Build a Healthy Relationship with Food)

A few days ago, I was on a road trip with a girlfriend who mentioned something she does with her daughter at mealtimes. It stopped me mid-conversation.

Because it was genius. And it made me think back to something I'd been saying to my own child for years...words that sounded so ordinary, so harmless, that I'd never once questioned them.

"Finish your dinner or you won't get dessert."

The moment I heard myself say it, I realised what I was actually teaching him.

I wasn't teaching him to eat his vegetables. I was teaching him to ignore his body.

Finish everything on your plate, regardless of how hungry or full you feel...and then, only then, you'll be rewarded. Said once, it's a moment. Said every single evening, it becomes a belief. A pattern embedded so quietly, so consistently, that by the time they're an adult, they don't even know it's there.

I know this because I lived it. I still reach for dessert only after I've finished a full meal, even when I'd genuinely love something sweet earlier. I eat until the plate is clear, not until I'm satisfied. The very opposite of what mindful, intuitive eating asks us to do.

We often think of food struggles as a grown-up problem. But so many of them start right here...at the family dinner table, in the messages we didn't realise we were sending.

There are many reasons we develop complicated relationships with food. Comfort eating, emotional numbing, social pressure, habit. But when we're conscious about it, what we really want is for our children to eat for the joy of it...and for the nourishment it gives their growing bodies. We want them to stay connected to their own hunger cues, not override them.

That's exactly what my friend's approach does. And I want to share it with you.

She puts dinner on the plate and turns it into a little story. She tells her daughter there's a slide from her mouth down to her tummy, and all the food on her plate are friends waiting to visit.

When her daughter pushes the broccoli to the side, she doesn't say "eat it." She asks: "Do you think the broccoli would like to join her friends today?"

If the answer is no, that's okay. The broccoli can come another day. But if the answer is yes, down the slide she goes, to play with all the other friends. And to explain why we eat a variety of foods? "They're all playing together down there."

Simple. Playful. And deeply clever.



This is something I first came across formally in my NLP training, when I learned about sub-modalities, the way our nervous system processes information based not just on the words we use, but on how we deliver them.

When we say "eat your broccoli" in the same flat, firm tone every night, we create the same flat, firm response: resistance. The message might be landing, but nothing's being received.

Change the delivery...the pitch, the playfulness, the tone...and suddenly a child's brain is engaged in a completely different way. You could try a funny voice. A high-pitched character. Donald Duck if you're feeling brave. The content of the message barely matters; it's the energy that opens the door.

I saw this work with my own son when he was little. He had a real fear of the buttons on his pyjamas...it sounds small, but it was genuinely distressing for him every night. So I made the buttons talk to each other as I did them up. Little conversations. Tiny personalities. Within a few nights, the fear was completely gone.

The technique works because it bypasses the part of a child's brain that's braced for conflict and opens the part that wants to play. It's not manipulation..it's communication. It meets them where they actually are.

So the next time your child digs their heels in...at dinner, at bedtime, at getting dressed..you know what to try. Shift the sub-modality. Change the voice, the story, the frame. Make it playful.

You might be surprised at how quickly the resistance melts.


P.S. If you're finding mealtimes, or any part of the day, feel like a constant battle, that's often a sign there's a deeper dynamic at play. The Stressed to Best Parent Method is designed to help you understand what's really going on and feel genuinely calm and confident in your parenting. Learn more here.