Six Steps to Raise a Healthy Eater
Many parents worry constantly about their kids being a fussy eater, kids who would not settle for their meal until they have their favorite cartoon/rhyme playing on the TV or Mobile. Some moms also fret perpetually about their little ones running away from veggies. I also have faced the same issue, and Below are some of the points which I now follow, and — these are generic to all kids.
1. The little one is allowed to choose what to eat. As a parent, our duty is to put healthy food, and only healthy food on the table. What to eat and how much to eat depends on the kid.
2. The kid can leave the table whenever he is done even if he has eaten negligible. Remember, our idea is to make mealtime a happy/fun time.
3. Kids have a little attention span and we should not expect them to eat their full meal by sitting in one place. So when he is done with self-feeding and leaves the dining table I do spoon-feed but without any kind of screen time and till the time he accepts the food happily. At times he/she may not eat anything — we should not take any stress for the same, nor should be resort to forcefully feeding.
4. If the little one needs to munch other than mealtime, make sure he always has a healthy option available, such as seasonal fruits, dry fruits, peanuts, fox nut (makhana), puffed rice (murmure), cheese. Just make sure you don’t store junk foods such as biscuits, chocolates, candy, chips, etc. It is obvious that any human being will mostly hop on junk food, given an option.
5. As a family, eat together. In fact, if my toddler is sleeping we wait for him to wake up to join us on the dining table. Family meals provide opportunities for parents to play role model.
6. Serve food to your little one as any other in the family is served and let the child eat by himself. It is ok if he gets a little messy.
While raising my two kids (8 and almost 2 years old boys), I’ve come to realize that the core reason for the kid’s disliking towards food (read vegetables) is not their childhood or their taste-buds, but it is the parents’ behavior that results in a picky eater.
The fuzzy eating issues usually crop with the first introduction of food to the baby or toddler. The eager mom has a preconceived milestone in terms of quantity to feed the kid, and thereby unconsciously tries distracting the kid by giving him screen-time and convincing to eat. Later our toddler’s naive brain associates mealtime with screen-time and this becomes a habit. When forced to eat, the toddler connects the food with an unpleasant experience and tend to develop a hatred for food.
Some more tips to encourage kids to love healthy food and vegetables:
1. Show your kid how much you love home-cooked food and vegetables. At times, my kid refuses to eat at all and I make others in the family to try the dish and when they say it’s awesome, my kid asks by himself to taste it.
2. Involve your kid in cooking. I show my toddler raw vegetable while chopping and then show him the state of cooking. Later when served on the table he already has some connection with it and more ready to try it.
3. Have a small home garden in your house, plant some basic vegetables in it. We have started home gardening recently and my kids love to take care of the seedlings. Research shows that children who are involved in growing vegetables on their own are more likely to eat them.
4. Take your kid to the farmers market to buy fresh vegetables and let him also choose one for the day’s meal.
