Only if you have a child at home will you realize how utterly impossible it is to get your little one to eat. A mom is faced with this Herculean task of feeding her children at least thrice every day.
Simply because your neighbor’s child has three helpings of baked beans and Russian salad, does not mean you can force the same thing down your child’s throat as well. Stop deciding how much your child should have. Themedguru discovers ways to make your child eat.
It is a well proven fact that vegetables are good for your health, and many parents work religiously to ensure that their kids have them every day, mostly with little success. The key to success could lie in making mealtime, fun time. Your children should look forward to their meals. The following tips can be used to add joy to eating:
• Kids love bright colors and interesting shapes. Buying dishware in different colors and shapes could help making meals exciting. Children might want to eat more number of meals and for a longer duration if they fall in love with their plates and glasses. The idea is to induce their interest in eating.
• Arranging the food in your child’s plate to make creative patterns can also make food disappear within no time. Brown breads and pancakes are best to try out these patterns on.
• Brainstorm to give funny names to dishes. Welcome suggestions from your kids too and then make sure that you unfailingly call the dishes with the name bestowed upon them. Now who could refuse a giggle-sparkle sandwich?
• Handing over a piece of paper and a few crayons or reading out a book to your toddler can also help divert his attention and make meal times, fun.
Never Give Options
Once on the dining table, make sure that your child gets to eat what has been served to everybody else. Do not include too many ‘this or that’ in your menu. If the child doesn’t eat, hoping to get something of his choice as snacks, convert what you had made for dinner into a snack. The chances that the child might try out the dish are pretty bright since he is already hungry and besides, you also end up achieving your aim which is to make your kid have a proper meal.
Don’t Ban Fast Food
Don’t label fast food as ‘bad’ or create a big hullabaloo about it. Treat it just like any other food item and try convincing your kids that they can be had only in small proportions. Keep them reserved for special occasions rather than banning their entry into your house, which can end up making them all the more desirable.
Don’t Concentrate on Achieving a Specific Target Weight
Children come in all sizes and shapes. Don’t let weight issues bother you too much. What is important is you educate them with respect to being strong and healthy.
Involve Children in Grocery Shopping
Grocery shopping can be the best way of enhancing your children’s involvement into what is being cooked and thus make them eat better. Another addition could be an enhanced involvement in cooking too. If they have made it, they will eat it too.
Minimize Soda and Juice During Meals
Kids are smart! They might sometimes fill their tummies with juice or soda leaving little room for proper food. This can especially happen if their plate doesn’t hold food of their liking. Besides, sodas and juices are not only full of useless calories, they also act as dehydrators. Water is always a wiser choice for drinking throughout the day. When you do give the juices (in between meals), make sure it is 100 percent pure juice.
Serve Desserts on Special Occasions Only
Dessert should be sparingly served on special occasions and not a part of dinner every day. Doing otherwise might tempt your child to eat little dinner so that he can have his fill with the dessert.
Keep Your Dieting to Yourself
Never discuss your dieting schedules with or in front of your little one. As an additional care, keep all your fashion magazines well beyond their reach. It will not take them too long to pick up your talks and then imitate your behavior.
Never Use Food as a Reward or Punishment
Food should never be used as a means of shaping behavior. If the child misbehaves, don’t punish him by withdrawing food or if he displays desirable behavior, don’t express your appreciation by making promises of food. These seldom have positive effect on reinforcing behavior because the message that goes across is ‘it is okay to misbehave, that way. I don’t even have to have food this way’.
Eat Together and Imbibe Healthy Eating Habits by Setting Examples
It is of utmost importance that you yourself eat healthy and display good dinning manners if you want your child to do so. Practice what you preach. Also make sure that the entire family sits together for having lunch and dinner at least. This is the only way that a child learns to finish all that is served to him and also to pick up good eating habits.
There is no pleasure like the pleasure of watching your child eat. Go ahead and try the possible permutations to get your child to eat.
Submitted by six figures yearly (not verified) on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 15:15.
Your child's health should be one of the most important things in your life as a mom and dad. It vital to teach him from a small age to eat healthy and not get used to junk food and so on.
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Your child's health should
Your child's health should be one of the most important things in your life as a mom and dad. It vital to teach him from a small age to eat healthy and not get used to junk food and so on.
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