“Hearty Boys” Steve McDonagh and Dan Smith serve up good humor and great food on their Food Network show, “Party Line With the Hearty Boys,” and in their Chicago cooking empire. Their son, Nate, a pasta-powered 2-year-old is, shall we say, a selective eater, and so, the Hearty Boys offer their tips for taming your child’s tentative taste buds.

¢ “Know when to give up. We employ our pediatrician’s advice as a mantra. ‘Is he drinking milk? Then he’s not going to die.'”

¢ “Don’t open with your best line. If we really are hoping he’ll eat chicken stew, we first throw a couple of sacrificial items for him to turn his nose up at. We wait till he thinks he’s winning the choosing game, and then we hit him with the big guns.”

¢ “Watch how other people feed him. There is definitely an element of the picky eater that is purely power struggle. He has our number and knows how to manipulate the meal. At first we were amused by the fact that he’d eat when Grandma or his sitter fed him, but after a while it started to just really tick us off. So, we decided to quietly mimic the way they fed him – which was more of a simple drop-and-run method. That consistency at every meal can be helpful.”