Most children seem to have an aversion to healthy food. Right from toddler stage, most kids will refuse the carrot and the broccoli and happily lap up a deep fried potato chip. As parents it can get to be quite exhausting trying to feed the child healthy food. And if you have a picky eater who will sit with his/her food for an hour and complain mostly and eat little, you may be hopping mad already.
Below are some tips to help you feed your picky eater better:
- Healthy nibblers – Kids love to nibble and if you want your picky eater to get more nutrition you have to offer healthy nibblers to these children. Instead of a bag of chips bring in vegetable chips or roasted wheat and other similar healthy bites. You could make some at home too. Right from crunchy carrot and broccoli salad with cheese and lime to a fruit salad all of it will work as a filler for your kid and help you get important nutrition into the child too.
- Package it – Children will eat almost anything if it ‘looks’ interesting to them and if you have a picky eater you have to learn to package it well. Depending on the age of child, put in more effort into making the food that you offer more appealing to the kid. A smiley face on the mince pie or a butterfly made of hash or even a colorful drink to go along with the food, a picky eater is more likely to get attracted to these foods than to the routine stuff.
- Habits – Children are often given to some strange habits and if we understand these we can work around them. Try and figure out the foods that your kid does well with. Make these foods more often if you feel that the kid is happy eating them. There are some children who will eat the same thing for weeks on end while others may not like to be served the same recipe more than once a week. Judge the habit of your picky eater and cater to it. If the food on the table is more to the child’s taste buds, he/she is likely to accept it with greater ease.
- Hunger time - We often tend to feed our children before they get hungry and this makes them fussy eaters. It is important to offer food to the kids only when they are hungry enough to appreciate it. Try and see how long your child takes between meals. Every kid has a different system and while one may get hungry within an hour of having a meal, another kid may want food only after three hours of so of eating. You must give the food to the kid only when the child is hungry and not before time.
As moms we do worry that picky eaters are not getting in sufficient nourishment and so will often turn to supplements. However, this is not a great idea unless your doctor has recommended it.
My toddler would not eat well at all and in my worry I would give her whatever else she asked for. Chocolates, chips, candy seemed to be her bribing weapons. I tried supplements too and she would still not eat. After about six months I decided to be firm and stopped all junk food in the house. All the supplement drinks were stopped and she was told that she will get food only on the dinning table. After a week long power tussle she settled down to eating nutritious food and eating it well. We still have a junk day a week and she enjoys it thoroughly.
I run a day care center for kids and almost all moms worry about their child not eating properly. Strangely in most cases these so called picky eaters eat very well with us. Just having so many other kids around and wanting to finish their food fast and going back to their play makes these children eat well. So before you really panic about your child being a picky eater, do take time to see if indeed he is a picky eater or are you just an over worried mom. Also remember that kids go through phases and it won’t be long before your picky eater is eating so much that you are worrying if he is going to become obese.