One of the most important things you can offer your child is to teach them how to eat healthy and form good habits. Eating healthy doesn’t always come easy – especially for children. Children don’t quite understand the way food affects our body and the importance of learning to eat healthy whole foods for the long run.
Parents play a huge role in shaping their children’s eating habits right from when they put that first bite into their mouth. Forming good habits takes time and effort on both the parents and children’s end.
My son is turning 2 in a couple of months and I have been feeding him solid foods since he was 6 months old. My son eats very healthy meals and enjoys fruits, vegetables, stews, and soups the most. I have been actively trying to teach him how to love nutritious foods and can say he is on a good start.
As we all know, babies and toddlers can be notorious when it comes to eating. From my experience, I’ve learned thirteen strategies that have helped me and will help your child to learn to eat healthy foods and enjoy them.
Read below to see the different ways you can ensure your child forms good eating habits.
Start Early
Starting to eat healthy wholesome meals early is key in shaping your child’s future habits. How early? Before they’re even born! Research has shown that the foods you consume while you’re pregnant may help shape what your baby will enjoy eating, even years later.
Babies can start to taste the foods you’re eating even while in the womb. The more they taste a certain food, the more they’ll be familiar with it even after they’re born. By eating healthy, you’re not only providing your body and baby with the nutrition you’ll both need while pregnant, but you may also be training your baby’s taste buds for the future.
“Things like vanilla, carrot, garlic, anise, mint — these are some of the flavors that have been shown to be transmitted to amniotic fluid or mother’s milk,” says Julie Mennella, who studies taste in infants at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. In fact, Mennella says there isn’t a single flavor they have found that doesn’t show up in utero.
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While pregnant, I made sure to omit any sugary foods from my diet and instead received sugar from natural sources such as fruits, maple syrup, and honey. I also ate a large variety of vegetables and fruits daily. I ate wholesome foods and omitted all processed foods out of my diet. This was the first step I took to training my baby how to eat healthy.
Model Healthy Eating
In order to ensure your child forms healthy eating habits, you (as the parent) should be modeling the same habits in front of them. Parents are their children’s biggest role models – they observe, imitate, and copy many things their parents do.
The way parents talk about food, cook meals, and eat are the most important influence of developing healthy eating habits for a child. Therefore, eating healthy wholesome meals will encourage your child to do the same for themselves.
Read Also: Five things I do to keep my toddler healthy
Eat Dinner As a Family
Eating together as a family is a very important factor in helping children eat healthier meals. There are many benefits to this family tradition that can shape your child’s future; some of which include mental health, social skills, and overall eating behaviors.
A Harvard study found that families who eat together are twice as likely to eat their five servings of fruits and vegetables as families who don’t eat together. Furthermore, kids who eat family meals tend to eat a wider variety of foods and become less picky eaters.
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Through my personal experience with feeding my toddler, I’ve also noticed he eats a lot better when we’re all eating as a family. He is usually intrigued by the food in our plates and asks to try them. During our family mealtimes, he is usually willing to try more foods and eats more overall.
Refrain from Offering Unhealthy Alternatives
One of the biggest mistakes you can do as a parent is to offered unhealthy alternatives when they refuse to eat a healthy meal in front of them. This allows them to learn that if they refuse the food you’re offering, you will give them something better (such as Mac and Cheese, or pizza). Once they notice this pattern, it will be harder and harder to get them to eat what’s in their plate.
With that being said, sometimes the child may simply not have an appetite for the food you’re providing for that day (similar to adults, children are no different!) In that case, offer a different healthy alternative in place of that.
For example, if I’ve offered my son a nutritional soup, rice, and yogurt and he’s only choosing to eat the soup and refuses to eat the rice and yogurt – that’s fine. I don’t force him to eat something he doesn’t want to – which brings me to my next point.
Never Force a Child to Eat
Forcing a child to eat can do more harm than good. As parents, we tend to believe we know better than our young child. Sometimes this isn’t the case. Children have natural cues that indicate when they’re hungry and when they’re full.
When we force children to eat, their internal cues about hunger and fullness become confused. This can cause major problems in the future, such as weight issues and even psychological issues.
Keep in mind, children may also be going through many developmental stages that affect their eating habits; some that we may not be aware of. (Such as teething, illness, or even growth spurts).
If I offer breakfast and my son refuses to eat, then I assume he might just not be hungry upon waking up. In this case, I usually wait an hour or so and try again or I’ll wait for him to tell me he’s hungry. (Babies and toddlers that can’t speak yet have a way of telling you they’re hungry – just look for cues that indicate so).
Another strategy I’ve used often is to just leave the food accessible to my child. Once he’s hungry, he will usually see it and start munching on it on his own – no force required.
Now, of course, this point applies to children that appear healthy and that end up eating sometime during the day. If a child hasn’t eaten for days, something may be wrong and I would get them checked with a doctor. To clarify this point – don’t force them to eat certain foods at certain times because they just might not be hungry or have an appetite.
Don’t Offer Too Many Snacks
This is a point I had to learn through experience. When my son started eating solid food, I would give him snacks in between meals so he didn’t get hungry.
When it was time for dinner, I realized because I had been providing so many snacks, he wasn’t hungry and therefore wasn’t eating a nutritious meal. He was instead gaining calories off of the snacks (which contain little to no nutrition) and wasn’t enjoy his wholesome meals.
Read Also: Five Quick On-The-Go Snacks For Your Toddler
A small snack is great if there is a long stretch between meals. The snack must be enough to fill them up temporarily but not fill them up for the rest of the day.
If my son gets hungry between meals, I try to have him snack on vegetables or fruits such as cucumbers, tomatoes, or avocados. By doing this, he usually satisfies his hunger for a short period of time and is hungry by dinner and will then complete his entire meal (which makes me a happy mama!)
Designate a Time and Place for Meals
It’s important to teach children that there are a time and place to eat. To start, teach children that our main meals are eaten during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Next, teach them that anything they eat in between is a snack just to hold them over for the next meal.
Next, it’s important for children to have a designated spot in the house to eat their meals such as a highchair or at the dinner table. This encourages them to eat with the family and allows them to disconnect from everything else and focus on their meal. Eating on the couch, while playing, or in front of a screen is discouraged because it forms bad habits that may become hard to change in the future.
Introduce a Variety of Foods
Constantly introducing a variety of foods is very important. Children may need exposure to food 15-20 times before they decide to eat it and to determine if they like it. Do not make an assumption they don’t like a certain food because they’ve refused it once, twice or even ten times. Keep offering it (don’t force), and you may be surprised.
Next, offer foods cooked in a variety of different ways. Children may like certain textures and tastes over others, so try to experiment with cooking certain foods in different ways to find out what they like. For example, my son loves roasted potatoes but will not eat mashed potatoes. (Again, I haven’t said he doesn’t like mashed potatoes because I won’t make that determination after just a few times of him refusing it).
Third, offer foods in different settings. My son always refused to eat raspberries however when we took him to a raspberry farm, he ate two little cartons on his own! He’s done this with a few different foods such as apples and strawberries – he’s refused to eat them at home but accepted to eat them at guests homes and ended up falling in love with them.
Last, don’t omit food from their diet that you don’t like. Just because you as their parent don’t enjoy eating a particular food doesn’t mean they won’t. For example, I grew up disliking avocados (I love them now!) and avocados have been my son’s favorite fruit for a few months now.
Allow them to be a Part Of The Cooking Process
Allow children to cook with you and be a part of preparing meals for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Also, allow them to spend time with you in the kitchen and teach them about the cooking process and how meals come together.
Children are curious and love to play and experiment and this is a great way to get them involved. Children who cook are more likely to taste the food they are working with since they’re more intrigued when they’re involved in the process.
Other than the fact they will be more open to trying foods, they may discover a passion for something they would have been otherwise unaware of. Furthermore, this time spent in the kitchen between parents and children can create great family bonding time and a tradition in the family that the entire family will enjoy.
Teach Them About the Body and Nutrition
One of the most important knowledge bases you can provide your children is teaching them about their body and about overall nutrition and how the two relate. Children will have to live with their body their entire life and will at one point, start making their own choices as to what they will fuel it.
If children are equipped with knowledge of how different food affects their body, they will be able to make better choices towards it and their health. Teaching them about food and nutrition can be done in a fun way while still remaining informative. Try to encourage talk about this topic while spending time in the kitchen cooking the meals together, as mentioned in my last point.
Do Not Speak Negatively About Their Eating habits or About Foods
One of the worst things parents can do is label a child as a “picky eater” especially in front of them. Children tend to believe what their parents say about them and hearing such words from their parents can set them up for failure. They may believe that they are picky and act this way because that’s what they’ve heard they’re described as.
Read Also: How to Deal With a Child That Doesn’t Listen
Instead, talk positively about their eating habits in front of them. Saying things like they’re great eaters and are willing to try anything can positively affect the way they behave towards food. Even if they refuse to like a certain food, explain to them positively that they may not have an appetite for it at that time and that maybe they will want to try it later. No matter the age of the child, avoid making any negative comments or descriptions about them.
This goes the same for food. Do not treat healthier foods like they’re any less tasty than other food options or make negative comments about the way they taste. Put a plate of vegetables, salad, or soup in front of your children with the ease you would of putting a plate of fries and ketchup. Children can read your body language and if they feel like you’re serving them a particular food with hesitation, they may not want to try it.
Never Use Food as a Reward or Punishment
Parents who use very overly controlling feeding practices with their children, such as using food as a reward or a treat, could be unintentionally teaching their children to rely on food to deal with their emotions. These children may be more likely to ‘emotionally eat’ later in childhood, a longitudinal study of parents and their children suggests.
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Food should be used as a way to fuel the body and satisfy hunger, nothing else. Once food is used as a way to deal with emotions, it can become a hard cycle to break and can cause major problems later in life. Food rewards also encourage children to eat when they are not hungry, thus altering self-regulation cues (the importance of these is mentioned in the beginning of this article).
A healthy outside, starts from the inside. – Robert Urich
4 comments
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