How to Plan Meals When You Have Picky Kids

Every "feed your picky kid" article eventually says the same thing:
hide vegetables in a sauce. That is not meal planning. That is a single
trick, and it stops working the moment your child notices the green
flecks.

Planning meals for picky kids is a logistics problem, not a psychology
problem. Here is how parents who actually get a home-cooked dinner on
the table five nights a week tend to set it up.

## Start with a rotation, not a menu

A full weekly menu sounds organized. In practice, inventing seven new
meals every Sunday is what kills home cooking. A rotation of eight to
twelve dinners that your household already accepts is far more durable.

Pick meals that clear three tests:

- At least one adult likes cooking it.
- At least one kid will eat most of it without a fight.
- The leftovers are usable — for lunch the next day, or frozen.

Twelve meals times one night each is almost three months of dinners
with no repeats, and you never have to think "what is for dinner" again.

## Build a "safe anchor" into every plate

Every dinner should contain at least one component the picky kid will
definitely eat. Plain rice. Buttered pasta. A piece of bread. Apple
slices. This is not a reward. It is insurance — if everything else on
the plate is rejected, they still ate something, and you still ate
dinner without negotiating.

The anchor also lowers stakes on the experimental component. A kid who
knows the rice is coming will try one bite of the curry next to it. A
kid facing an all-new plate will refuse on sight.

## Exposure, not pressure

Research on picky eating is consistent on one point: repeated, low-
pressure exposure to a food increases acceptance over time. The number
most often cited is ten to fifteen exposures before a new food is
accepted. That is weeks or months, not one dinner.

Practically: put a tiny portion of the new food on the plate. Do not
comment on it. Do not require a bite. Remove the plate without drama
when the meal is over. Repeat next week. This is boring, and it works.

## Plan the week around two "wildcard" slots

A realistic weekly plan for a picky-kid household looks like this:

- Three nights: rotation meals everyone has eaten before.
- Two nights: leftovers or a fast standby (eggs, quesadillas, pasta).
- One night: a new or partly new meal, with a safe anchor.
- One night: out, takeout, or a kid-led simple meal (sandwiches and
fruit is a valid dinner).

Two wildcard slots is enough to keep the rotation expanding without
burning out.

## Use the tool to your advantage

Trying to hold a rotation, a grocery list, and everyone's preferences
in your head does not scale. The planner in /meal-plan is built for
exactly this pattern: tag recipes by who likes them, drop recipes onto
days, and the grocery list generates itself. Scale servings from two
to six in /recipes and the list follows. When a recipe works, tag it
"rotation" so you can find it again next month.

If you want starting points, /recipes/meal/dinner filters down to
weeknight-friendly dinners, and /recipes/diet/kid-friendly exists for
the category specifically.

## What to stop doing

Three things that waste planning energy:

- **Cooking two dinners.** A separate "kid dinner" every night teaches
the household that refusal produces a better meal. Serve one meal
with a safe anchor instead.
- **Hiding vegetables forever.** Blending spinach into brownies is fine
as nutrition insurance, but it does not teach a kid to eat spinach.
Serve visible vegetables too, in small portions, without pressure.
- **Reinventing Sunday.** If your rotation works, reuse it. Novelty is
not a virtue in a weeknight dinner.

Picky eating ends on its own timeline for most kids. Your job in the
meantime is to keep feeding the family without losing your evenings
to it. A rotation, an anchor, and a planner that remembers for you is
usually enough.