How to Make Your Child Have a Healthy Relationship With Food
You may go out of your way to encourage your kids to eat healthily but all they may want to eat is pies and chips. If you are finding it difficult to cultivate healthy eating habits in your child, follow these tips.
From the beginning, babies have the innate ability to eat intuitively. Naturally, they eat when they are hungry and stop when they have had enough. However, if you want to cultivate your child's healthy relationship with food, you need to start with healthy lifestyle habits first. Parents have one of the strongest influences on children and therefore it is our job, to model healthy behaviours. Follow these tips to ensure that your tiny human fuels their bodies with the best foods.
Surround Them with Whole Foods
As soon as your baby starts eating solid foods, make them eat unprocessed, whole foods with varying textures and flavours daily. This way, they will not only develop a palate for superfoods but they will also start to accept healthy foods as a standard.
Be a Role Model
Eating behaviour is a learning habit and it makes perfect sense that children shape their food habits after their parents. Eating together as a family will provide you an opportunity to demonstrate your own healthy eating habits. Be a role model for your child to improve their diet. Children Health Advice: Expert Reveals 10 Signs That Your Kid May Be Suffering From Bone Health Problems And Tips To Deal With It.
Don't Enforce
When you are trying to build a healthy relationship with food, learn to be a teacher and not an enforcer. Make every mealtime a learning opportunity and never force. The food is just a tool, so irrespective of whether your child ate all or none of the food, relax. Be rest assured that you succeeded because you tried. Children Playing and Spending More Time in Nature Will Have Healthier Lifestyle, Says New Study.
Let Them Play With Food
It might sound weird, but letting your child play with foods can help build healthy habits. A study published in the journal Appetite showed that playing with fruits and vegetables can develop a sense of acceptance in children. So let them splash some purees on the table and smash some boiled carrots. If your kid is older, let them help you in meal preparation. They will learn abundantly from this exercise.
Practice Responsive Eating
Learn to respond to your child's cues for hunger and satiety. Responsive eating encourages kids to eat when they feel hungry, so they don't have to eat forcefully. You can also introduce new foods when they are hungry and they will slowly learn to get acquired to the taste. Attention Parents! Here Are 5 Signs That Your Child Is Depressed.
Have a Food Ritual
Create a new food ritual and turn it into a game with every new item you introduce in their diet. Maybe you can have a ritual of look, smell, lick, bite and chew. They may just start by holding and looking at the food but eventually, they will come to biting and chewing it.
Lastly, do not give up easily. Try until you succeed. Children’s taste buds change and develop over time, so it is important to keep trying foods, even if it wasn’t an instant favourite the first time.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 27, 2019 02:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).