If you’ve ever found yourself standing at the stove cooking three different dinners just to keep the peace, you are not alone. An increasing number of parents are willing to cater to their fussy eaters to ensure they eat some vegetables. It’s a parenting challenge nobody fully prepares you for, and it turns out even professional chefs aren’t immune.

Sharmaine Hristovski knows this better than most. A chef with a background in fine dining and family restaurants, who now cooks for little ones at Little Zaks Academy and is also a mum to two boys, aged three and four – one of whom would happily survive on noodles alone if she let him.

She warns food fussiness peaks at age three caused by sensitivities to colour or texture and in other instances, children just out right refuse to try foods because they believe they won’t like them.

Sound familiar?

Start with What They Already Love

When Sharmaine started at Little Zaks, she noticed a lot of food going untouched. Rather than pushing through with the planned menu, she did something simple: she asked the kids what they actually liked.

Pasta came out on top so she used it as a launching pad. From that familiar base, Sharmaine started building more complex, nutritious dishes, layering in vegetables and experimenting with flavours all with a pasta base. Her creamy mushroom and spinach pasta became a surprise hit, then she added broccoli and it was a disaster because it was just too green!

Five Cooking Tips That Actually Work

Sharmaine has landed on a handful of strategies that genuinely get children eating food they normally wouldn’t –

1.     Play with colour. Kids have strong colour associations with food. Let them pick a colour for the meal, like red, and try something new like capsicum. It turns eating into a game rather than a standoff.

2.     Blend and hide. Bolognese, pasta sauces, curries and soups are all brilliant vehicles for sneaking in extra vegetables. If they can’t see it, they won’t object. Just don’t mention what’s in it until they have eaten it.

3.     Give them the illusion of control. Offer two vegetable options – one they like and one they don’t. They choose tonight’s veggie, but the other one comes back tomorrow. It’s a small compromise that feels big to them.

4.     Get them into the kitchen. Kids are far more likely to eat something they helped make. Even just stirring, tearing herbs or arranging things on a plate gives them ownership over the meal.

5.     Keep going, even when it feels pointless. Research suggests it can take up to 20 exposures to a new food before a child accepts it. That feels like a lot – but it means that saying no fifteen times doesn’t mean the battle is lost.

The Social Secret Weapon

One of Sharmaine’s most interesting observations is how much the social setting matters. Children who eat together are more willing to try new things, especially when they see their friends going for it. It’s peer influence working in your favour.

It’s part of why childcare mealtimes can be surprisingly effective and why eating together at family dinners can quietly shift things at home too.

You’re Not Failing, Keep Persevering!

Persistence matters more than perfection. Fussy eating is developmentally normal, and the strategies that work to overcome this just require consistency.

You don’t need to be a chef. You just need to keep showing up to the table.