Food and drink
Fast food's strong smells, salt and fizz can overwhelm the taste buds, and an unfamiliar texture often meets resistance before the child has even tasted. The pictures below let your child recognise the food in advance, part by part.
Food and drink
A burger next to a large drink with a straw and a slice of lime.
About this visual support
A burger smells strong from a distance, the soda bubbles and fizzes, and under the bun hide textures the child knows nothing about. For many children the first whiff or sight is enough to make the whole dish feel off-putting, long before a bite has reached the mouth.
Visual support can take the edge off the unknown by showing the food calmly in advance and splitting it into parts: the bun, the patty, the pickle, the fries, the drink. When the child gets to meet the dish in pictures first, the moment at the table is less surprising, and the choice to taste or not becomes clearer and less charged.
One concrete tip: make smelling and looking its own step before tasting, so the child can meet the smell on their own terms without it immediately becoming a demand to eat. In Routined you can assemble the parts of the meal as pictures and try the setup for fourteen days at no cost.