If you have a child, you probably already know how difficult it can be to get him to eat a healthy, nutritious diet. For the child with unique learning needs like autism, that challenge is often doubled! Some children show strong food preferences that lead to poor nutrition, preferring foods like Goldfish crackers and macaroni and cheese over fruits and vegetables.
While getting your child to eat a healthy diet may at times seem like an uphill battle, the good news is that using visual schedules and other supports can help get you both on the right track.
Here are some tips to get you started.
Visual Schedules for Healthy Eating
Visual and physical schedules are among the most effective strategies you can use to get your child with unique learning needs to eat a healthier diet.
To create a visual schedule for eating throughout the day, you should first come up with a general idea of when your child should be eating (and what he should be eating).
When Should My Child Eat?
Follow a regular schedule for meals and snacks. While this schedule might differ a bit between days (for example, weekdays might look a bit different than weekends), it’s important to block out times to eat every two and a half to three and a half hours. This will generally include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two to three snacks.
Meals should last between 15 and 30 minutes but no longer than 45 minutes. The exact timing will vary depending on the child and what other tasks he needs to attend to throughout the day.
By maintaining such timing, it will ensure that your child is still hungry for the next snack or meal.
What Should My Child Eat?
As for what your child should be eating, this, too, will vary depending on your child’s food preferences and schedule.
However, you should aim to get an echo of the five major food groups in each meal. These food groups are:
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Meats, seafood, and beans (or other proteins)
- Dairy
- Grains
This will ensure that your child has all the vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) he needs to be healthy.
Even if your child only eats a few types of foods from each food group, making sure he has a little bit of all of these items is essential. Try to include foods from at least three different food groups in each meal and foods from two groups in snacks. One of the foods should always be either a fruit or vegetable.
Monitor serving sizes, too – you can use the nutrition facts on food labels to help determine this.
Creating a Visual Schedule for Meal Times and Snacks
Many children with unique learning needs, such as autism spectrum disorder, benefit from a visual schedule at mealtimes that tell them not only when, but what, they are going to eat.
Visual schedules are beneficial both for verbal and nonverbal children, as well as for kids who happen to eat the same thing at most meals. Even if your child sticks to a pretty set diet with little to no variation, scheduling times for meals and snacks will help them know what to expect. Once you have the mealtime routine down pat, you may be able to start introducing new foods.
Post the visual schedule somewhere your child will see it often (the kitchen or dining room are both logical choices).
Be sure to include variations for meals that will take place outside of the home, such as those that occur at school. Leave some wiggle room in terms of timing but make sure everything is mostly set in store otherwise.
Use Pictures of Real Foods
The more pictures you include in your visual schedule, the better.
You can incorporate pictures as a choice system, letting your child choose from various pictures of different foods they can include in their meals.
Even people without unique learning needs know how powerful images are in encouraging an appetite – if you’ve ever been driven by a McDonald’s advertisement, it’s something you probably know all too well!
Because of this, it’s important to include lots of images to get kids excited about all of their healthy eating options.
You can use this visual schedule for menu planning o help you give your child options in planning out his meals. Even doing something as simple as sprinting out menu choices on cardstock with Velcro attached to the back (so they can mix and match their meal choices) can be effective!
Prepare Your Child for Changes in Routine
Routine changes are part of life – there are always going to be things that throw off the schedule – but for a child with unique learning needs, those changes can be earth-shattering and stressful.
Make sure your child knows that sometimes, mealtimes and snacks will be off. She might be eating some meals at school. Sometimes there will be unavoidable events (doctor’s appointments, weather events) that throw off meal times. Have a system in place that will help your child deal with these upsets to the routine – and hopefully, the meltdowns will be minimal.
Other Supports to Teach Healthy Eating Habits
There are other supports you can use to ingrain healthy eating habits in your child, too. Here are some to consider.
Teach Your Child About Nutrition
Most kids, especially those with unique learning needs, benefit from being actively involved in creating their own schedules and maintaining their own nutrition.
Educate your child on the importance of good nutrition from a young age. This will help teach them how important it is to eat healthily and take care of their bodies. This visual guide can help educate your children to eat well, too – but in a fun way that’s kid-friendly.
If this seems like a daunting task, don’t worry. Much of what you do can be taught by example! The next time you’re tempted to snack on junk food over real food, think of the example you are setting and instead, eat what you’d like your child to eat instead.
Communicate often (and loudly!) about the benefits of healthy eating. Your child might get sick of you droning on and on about the importance of eating vegetables and fruits – but by telling them why and how these foods are important, you’ll make a much bigger impact than you would if you were just telling them that they need to eat them.
Try Hands-On Activities
There are all kinds of hands-on activities you can use to convince your child to eat a healthier diet.
Bring your child with you to the farmer’s market or grocery store. If your child likes animals, you could even bring him to a farm to show him how milk or meat is made (be sure your child is cognitively and emotionally prepared for this, though, as some individuals will struggle with these concepts!)
Growing your own food is another option to encourage healthy eaters – maintaining a garden is also a great way to encourage physical activity.
Even something as simple as using toy food to demonstrate healthy eating activities can be highly effective for some children!
Shop and Cook Together
Bringing your child on grocery shopping excursions to allow him to select his own healthy food options is a great idea. Cooking together is another avenue you can explore.
Let your child make his own dietary decisions whenever possible. Giving lots of choices – “do you want an apple or banana with your breakfast? Would you prefer to make chicken quesadillas or tomato soup for dinner?” – is also a great idea.
You can even play “shopping list bingo” in which you have to make shopping lists or recipes with certain healthy food items. This will encourage your child to select, use, and eat healthy ingredients in a fun way.
Use Stories
Social stories can be highly effective in encouraging your child to eat healthy, especially once you explain the many benefits of eating a healthy diet. Depending on how advanced your child is – or how interested in the process of healthy eating – you may even be able to incorporate elements of food science and nutrition.
Of course, even basic social stories that involve your child eating a healthy meal can be effective.
Beyond social stories, there are other ways to use stories to teach your child to become a healthy eater. Have you ever heard the classic story of the Little Red Hen? This is a great way to teach about food production and to get your child more involved in healthy eating from farm to table.
Try a Rewards System
Using rewards to encourage your child to eat healthily will only go so far – eventually, you need to ingrain healthy habits that require no extrinsic motivation.
However, if you’re meeting with a lot of resistance in getting your child to stick to the visual schedules and supports you’ve put in place of healthy eating, another support system you can turn to is a rewards system. Offer non-food items in return for healthy eating (you don’t want to use treats like candy and ice cream, as this can negate the benefits of healthy eating).
Instead, offer your child things like activities and opportunities for physical activity to encourage healthy eating.
Again, be careful about how long or how heavily you rely on a rewards system for healthy eating. Children are most at risk of associating foods with emotions and feelings of accomplishment – this can develop unhealthy eating habits and cause them to eat when not hungry.
A Few More Tips to Create Healthy Eaters
When creating an eating schedule for your child with unique learning needs, there are a few more pointers to keep in mind.
One is that you should do your best to limit snacking between scheduled meals. While it’s perfectly fine to include scheduled snacks between meals, avoid any unscheduled “noshing” or grazing as this can turn into a constant habit that prevents healthier eating at scheduled mealtimes.
Instead, pre-portion out any snacks into the proper serving sizes and put them in appropriate containers like small dishes. Limit your child’s access to any snacks that aren’t on the schedule or that don’t include these premade snacks.
This also means limiting access to sodas and juices. Do not offer caloric drinks, even milk, unless they are part of a meal. This, too, can help reduce the loss of appetite at mealtimes that often occurs when a child has been grazing or drinking high-calorie beverages all day.
While some of the tips above may seem a bit restrictive at first, you likely already know how well your child functions when on a solid routine or schedule.
Consider implementing visual schedules and other supports to encourage your child to eat a healthier diet. Ultimately, you’ll be setting your child up for a healthier life (with outstanding eating habits) as an adult!
Further Reading
- Center for Disease Control: Tips for Teachers: Promoting Healthy Eating and Physical Activity in the Classroom
- Rebekah Pierce: How to Deal With Changes to a Routine
- Harvard University: Kids Healthy Eating Plate
- Rebekah Pierce: Teaching Diverse Learners About “Smart Shopping”