How to instill healthy eating habits in your child?

Many par­ents lament their chil­dren’s dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with food. Some­one is called a “lit­tle baby”, and some­one, on the con­trary, would not mind eat­ing, but it’s too picky.

The cul­ture of food should be instilled in the baby lit­er­al­ly from the cra­dle, so that there are no prob­lems with nutri­tion in the future. To do this, you need to fig­ure out how to make friends with the baby with food.

The stumbling block: to force or not to force

Experts say unan­i­mous­ly: forc­ing a child to eat is not worth it. Eat­ing is a nat­ur­al human need. Baby does­n’t want to eat? He is most like­ly not hun­gry. He will def­i­nite­ly give a sign or say when he gets hun­gry.

Chil­dren may refuse to eat for a vari­ety of rea­sons. If the whole thing is in poor health, then it is nec­es­sary to take up the treat­ment of the child. You can offer him a light broth, fruit or por­ridge on the water. If he refus­es in this case, then it will be enough to observe the drink­ing reg­i­men: warm water, herbal teas, broths.

Anoth­er com­mon rea­son for refus­ing food is a dis­like for spe­cif­ic foods. A child may not eat soup if his hat­ed onion floats in it, or refuse fish dish­es because he does not like the char­ac­ter­is­tic smell.

What to do in this case? In no case do not force the baby to eat unloved food by force! All this can com­pli­cate the rela­tion­ship with food. Do not form in your child thoughts about eat­ing, as about hard labor and serv­ing a sen­tence. Instead, you can offer your child dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the “hat­ed” dish about once a month. Baby can’t stand broc­coli? And if you make soup puree, casse­role, pan­cakes or bake with cheese?
Remem­ber that a person’s tastes change with age, so it’s impor­tant to occa­sion­al­ly offer an old­er child olives, broc­coli, or some­thing else that he couldn’t stand a cou­ple of years ago. In this mat­ter, it is impor­tant to be tact­ful and not insist if the son or daugh­ter vig­or­ous­ly refus­es.
This tac­tic will help avoid selec­tive eat­ing behav­ior when the child likes only “sausages with pas­ta” and will grad­u­al­ly expand the palette of his favorite tastes.

Don’t be dis­cour­aged if your attempts are not suc­cess­ful. The child may well have their own taste pref­er­ences.

How to instill healthy eating habits in your child

So that in the future the child does not get health prob­lems and does not learn what eat­ing dis­or­ders are, moms and dads should instill good eat­ing habits in babies from ear­ly child­hood.

one. Root out the rule “If you haven’t fin­ished eat­ing, you won’t get up from the table” or “All the pow­er is in the last spoon.” These absolute­ly incor­rect atti­tudes have spoiled more than one life, affect­ing peo­ple in the form of overeat­ing and feel­ings of guilt. Is the child fed up? Every­thing, he can leave the din­ing place, even if the cut­let and mashed pota­toes are left half-eat­en. Teach your child to lis­ten to his body’s sati­ety sig­nals and avoid over­feed­ing.

2. Be a good exam­ple. Tod­dlers always copy parental behav­ior, includ­ing food. In addi­tion, it is moms and dads who decide what foods to buy, what to cook and what time to serve meals. There­fore, try to eat right your­self, do not skip meals, dine in a des­ig­nat­ed place in a calm envi­ron­ment with­out a phone at hand or a TV turned on.

3. Set pow­er mode. Mode is the foun­da­tion of the basics. But he must also be healthy. It is wrong to eat when it pleas­es, but too clear­ly adjust­ed lunch­es and din­ners, as if by sec­onds, are also not the best exam­ple to fol­low. It is best to agree in advance with the whole fam­i­ly: “Din­ner in an hour”, “We will have lunch in 15 min­utes, go wash your hands.”

four. Teach your child about healthy snacks. If the child had a hearty break­fast or lunch and does not want to eat at the moment, he may well get hun­gry lat­er. Tell him about healthy snacks: apple slices, car­rot sticks, whole-rub­ber crack­ers, veg­eta­bles or fruits. It is worth intro­duc­ing a rule — snack­ing should be in mod­er­a­tion. So the child will learn to rea­son­ably dis­trib­ute por­tions of food at break­fast, lunch and din­ner. Let on the table in the kitchen in the free access is what you can eat.

5. Small por­tions. The secret to good health is not eat­ing big, but eat­ing reg­u­lar­ly and in mod­er­a­tion. Serve your baby food in a small neat dish — even psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly it will be more pleas­ant for him than look­ing at a huge deep bowl of borscht or a huge dish with meat and a side dish.

6. Par­ents care teach your child to rec­og­nize the feel­ing of hunger and not to be con­fused with emo­tions — bore­dom, melan­choly, sad­ness. These emo­tions, even an adult often “jams”. Tell your child about the impor­tance of trust­ing what he feels and teach him to rec­og­nize what exact­ly he wants to eat. Try to cook new dish­es togeth­er, dis­cuss the nuances of tastes and emo­tions about cook­ing and eat­ing food.

It is impor­tant for moms and dads to remem­ber that a child’s rela­tion­ship with food is based on sev­er­al fac­tors: fam­i­ly tra­di­tions, health, tem­pera­ment and taste pref­er­ences. Does the child eat like a bird or refus­es to eat? Do not force — the baby is not an ene­my to him­self, so he eats exact­ly as much as he needs. A cause for con­cern can only be if the reduced appetite is caused by ail­ments. In this case, you should show your son or daugh­ter to a spe­cial­ist doc­tor.