The following 10 tips will help parents successfully implement a proper and balanced diet in their young children, ensuring their health and proper development of skills and habits.
1. We have patience
Infants and toddlers from the age of 6 months to 3 years want to have the opportunity to experiment with every aspect of their diet.
The young child needs to take the food in his hands and investigate it with all his senses, touch, smell, taste, play with the colors and shapes of the food, to feel confident before consuming.
As long as parents have the patience and time to give them this initiative, they will have gained, in addition to the proper development through nutrition and in the area of developing their children’s skills.
2. We create a routine
Children benefit from a structured routine. We try to keep the child’s meal times consistent.
We keep 3 main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and 3 snacks, one between breakfast and lunch, another between lunch and dinner, and another snack before bedtime.
The child must sit at the table for each main meal. We allow ambulatory chewing only at the breakfast and afternoon snacks.
3. We faithfully follow the right decisions
Parents decide the “where”, “what” and “when”.
The child decides the “how much”.
Parents and children together decide the “how”.
Example: we will serve lunch at the table and it will be spaghetti with sauce. We can offer an alternative choice, e.g. which cheese will accompany the spaghetti or whether he will eat tomato or cucumber as a vegetable. We should let him choose the quantity on his own from the plate we have already set out for him. If we want him to suck the spaghetti by holding it with his hand or to cut it into pieces for convenience, we will discuss it with the child.
4. We focus correctly on the praise we will give
Our praise should focus on the method and the effort and not on the result.
Example: We tell our little one, how nice that you eat with a fork, we do NOT say bravo, you ate all your food.
5. We remain firm in the plan of good nutrition/habits
In cases of illness, we respect our child’s possible temporary anorexia and we can do him a favor more, e.g. to eat something forbidden in his daily diet, but we do NOT fulfill all his wishes and all his demands because he is sick. Children always test us and… try to manipulate us.
6. We become creative
The right routine nourishes and teaches children, the exception to the routine makes them shine.
We can change the monotony, in terms of the type of food, the smells, the colors, the texture of the food.
7. We are not bothered by variability
Variability is an element of infancy and should not worry us that a month ago the child was eating fish and now he doesn’t even want to see it.
8. We don’t forget hydration
Frequent intake of water from the introduction of solid foods and after the 6th month is essential, even if the child does not ask for it. Constipation is common in children and low water intake is jointly responsible along with the lack of vegetable intake.
9. We teach the child to love breakfast
It is the most important meal of the day, especially for an organism that is trying to grow properly like a child.
10. The whole family eats the same food
Once the child can eat all foods, the child does not learn anything if everyone has different food at the table. Most likely, his demands and desires for forbidden foods or foods that he likes very much will increase.
Nutrition for Healthy Preschoolers (PART 1 – the content of nutrition) is here
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