Food presents a range of problems for both parents and children, but why? We’re going to look into what food is like for a child, and how you can help establish some healthy eating habits.

Fussy Eating

The ‘big one’ has to be fussy eaters, as children are particularly prone to this. It’s a natural stage of childhood, but it should be kept within reason and it’s difficult to know whether to give in to them or not. One key tip is to feed your child a huge range of foods as early on after weaning as possible. Even foods that you know they won’t like (e.g. olives or grapefruit) are important so that they know a wide range of tastes and can start to decide what they like and what they don’t like.

Staying calm is easier said than done when it comes to trying to feed a fussy child, but remember that their taste-buds are far more sensitive than ours. Very small children prefer delicate sweet tastes because they remind them of breast milk which is comforting and ’safe’. They may not be refusing a food because they’re playing up, they may refuse it because it tastes bitter and their innate intuition is telling them it could be poisonous. This is why children dislike bitter sprouts so much.

You might also want to try alternatives to foods that have certain vitamin/nutrient contents so that your child is still healthy, but not having to eat foods they hate. For instance, if they refuse to eat carrots then substitute for another food that’s also high in Vitamin A, such as sweet potato or spinach.

Playing with Food

Unfortunately, children will play with food, because that’s how they learn about it. Without experimenting with the texture, how it breaks apart, whether it will stick to other bits of food etc. they can’t begin to know if they like it or not and whether the really want it in their mouths.

Luckily, there is a way around it that doesn’t mean excusing your child’s manners to guests and being embarrassed by them. This involves setting up a play time in between meals (you don’t have to do this a lot, perhaps once a week) where your child is allowed to play with a certain type of food, on a specific play-tray and they can do what they like with it (within reason!). You might choose jelly, custard powder with water (a very unique and fascinating consistency), ice blocks, rice pudding or anything in between as long as it’s not hot or small enough to get lodged in their throats if they eat it. These sessions are the time when they’re allowed to play with food, but they should not be allowed to play with food at the table. You might, on the other hand, choose to allow it during lunch, but not the evening meal.

Self Confidence in Cooking

Teaching your child that tasty home-cooked food is easy to make is important, to stop them preferring brands. A very young child can pick out a brand logo a mile off, before they can even read what they’re hankering after. If they start to assume it’s easier to buy yummy food at McDonald’s than cook it from scratch, that could carry through to adolescence and early adulthood. They start to feel they can rely on brands better than they can rely on themselves, and they become unhealthy as a result. If you teach a child how easy it is to home cook then when it comes to going to University or moving out of the home they’ll have the confidence to look after themselves.

Start off by asking them to compile their own dinner plate. Learning to serve their own dinner is a great way to develop motor skills and coordination, even if it does mean a few spills! They’ll also learn about portion size this way, and you can tell them that they have to eat everything they serve themselves before they get dessert to exercise even more self-control. Next, try basic baking, like making rice crispie cakes or flapjack. Cooking at home can mean treats too! You might ask them to help make a fruit salad by cutting a banana with a child’s knife, or scoop out the inside of a mango with a spoon. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as the preparation is safe.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 11:48 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.