Feeding Your Child — The Dinnertime Struggle
Dealing with kids can be a fun, exciting and stressful experience as they have none other than a complete mind of their own: they laugh, they cry, they whine, they smile…and they are overly blunt about everything and anything.
When navigating the first few stages of parenthood, it can be incredibly difficult to manage the different types of characters and personalities that might be present within the household, and better yet...getting them to establish proper eating habits.
Here are a few challenges that you might stumble upon the way when feeding your child for the very first time:
Your child does not like to eat fruits & vegetables
Colors have a way of creating a sort of fight or flight response within ourselves at the very first sight of possible danger — so don’t be too surprised if your child shrieks or is grossed out by the simple sight of something * gasps * green. Luckily, there are a few simple ways to go about getting those fruits & vegetables into your family meals for optimal everyday nutrition.
How to deal with it
Present new foods in a more fun & exciting way — find ways to get everyone more excited about the idea of eating lots of fruits and vegetables!
The more your child is exposed to a variety of foods, the more likely they will be encouraged to try it out and eventually...eat it!
Make food appealing to eat. Try placing foods onto colorful plates, cutting them into smaller pieces, decorating them to look more visually appealing to eat, or introducing a new kind of food/recipe every other week!
Don’t be shy to get a little creative doing it, and more importantly...to just have fun with it! It’s all about the learning experience.
Find ways to (subtly) integrate them into your child’s favourite recipes ─ there’s nothing like the element of surprise!
Get colorful and crafty in the kitchen by using fruits & vegetables as simple additions to your deliciously home cooked recipes!
Discover the number of ways you can casually slip in a fruit or vegetable in any kind of recipe — by puréeing it, using it as a natural food coloring or as a natural sweetener…they’ll never know that the delicious dish you had prepared for the dinner table was chalk full of veggies!
Keep it as an option on the table ─ Over time and frequent exposure, kids will eventually get used to having a variety of colorful foods on their plate, and with enough luck, those first impression jitters will slowly go away.
Normalize the sight of fruits & vegetables by having these foods as simple parts of your family’s everyday meals or in close proximity to prompt you to eat it, such as in the fridge, on the countertop or on the dinner table.
2. Your child does not sit still at the dinner table.
Kids have a tendency to have quite a lot of energy...which can be fun at times, but also extremely tiring when it turns into a daily mealtime battle.
Getting your child to sit still and be calm when sitting at the dinner table is simply the first step towards significant change and gradual progress.
How to deal with it
Get them more involved in the kitchen ─ allow your kids to partake in the everyday household activities by simply asking them to help out in the kitchen. At home, everyone is a participant!
Ask them to help set up the table, participate in your latest kitchen creation or to simply get into the habit of cleaning up after themselves after having eaten or cooked a decent meal.
Remember: good habits start young!
Set dinner table rules ─ setting up regular meal times everyday can help to create proper structure into everyone’s daily routine as well as help to restore a balance and common ground within the home environment.
Make it a point to eat your meals at the same time every single day. Whether you're single living alone at home, as a couple or in the company of other people, creating a certain level of consistency within our busy weeks is the key to being more mindful of our usual eating habits.
Set a designated eating area ─ with all the possible distractions present around us, sitting still for an extended period of time is quite frankly, a learned behaviour.
Teaching everyone to take the time to eat 3 meals a day (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner) starts by simply dedicating a specific table in the home to relax and eat.
Food is meant to be enjoyed in the close company of our loved ones, it is and should be the most relaxing part of everyone’s day.
3. Your child is extremely picky or does not want to eat their food.
It can be a completely disheartening feeling as a main household chef when there’s a picky eater present within the room: food is gone to waste, your precious creation is turned away and your child is left unfed and hungry!
How to deal with it
Get them more involved in the kitchen and weekly meal planning ─ kids need to learn the importance of food by making them understand how much it is a privilege as well as it is a right.
Observe your child’s usual eating habits (e.g. likes, dislikes, behaviours surrounding food) and invite them to partake in a food-related activity such as grocery shopping, meal prepping or cooking.
This will allow you to take the time to better understand their needs & preferences as well as make them be more aware of the work and care involved in making those homemade meals.
Choose more family-friendly recipes ─ Pay close attention to the types of foods & recipes you know your child will eat so that they can become a backup in moments of a real mealtime struggle.
In other words, on days you know it will most likely be hard to feed your child, you’ll know that there’s always the go-to recipe to turn towards to ensure that your child is getting properly fed.
Get them to discover new foods — get your kids to see, touch, taste and feel the foods you’re going to prepare for them...It sometimes takes a while for kids to like a new food, let alone eat it!
Give them the chance to discover, taste, smell and touch their foods before choosing to react too quickly — they may be more open to the ideas and you may be surprised to discover a new side of them that has never been seen before!
Overall, cooking for your child can start off as an extremely stressful experience, but is something that definitely gets better with time, continuous effort and patience.
Learn to love exploring their taste buds, testing out new recipes at home and watching them grow into healthy full-grown adults!