Healthy Eating Habits for Toddlers

Being a parent is a full-time job. You need to be aware of every single thing your baby is doing and what they need. Most importantly meals and eating habits need to be particular for healthy living. The more healthy food you feed to your child, the more healthy lifestyle you can give to him. We often don’t take these things seriously which makes a bad impact at the growing age. Practicing good food intake from childhood will help in healthy growth as well as good learnings.

Let’s see what are the few important factors that can help your child learn healthy eating habits.

1. Family involvement:

Mothers have to run behind their children for feeding. This is not something that should happen every day. To avoid such situations, try to sit together for lunch and dinner. Make a habit of taking meals with the whole family. This will encourage the child to eat food by watching others. Make your mealtime fun by adding good conversation. Unless the child doesn’t see you do things in a correct way, he is not going to learn automatically.

2. Snack time:

Children love to have snacks every day. Say a big no-no to packaged foods and ordered snacks from shops. Invest some time in making a bowl full of healthy snacks that have a good amount of nutrients. If what you made tastes good, your child will not be going to deny it.
Another important factor about snacks is, children want to have snacks continuously which is not at all a good sign. Continuous snacking can be harmful which can be avoided by setting proper timings for everyday routine.

3. Food messages:

We all know how much children love to hear stories. They always find some connection in the story and practice the same things in their day-to-day life. So, why not tell them interesting stories about food!!! Tell them the importance of food and which vegetable is good for what reasons. Tell them the purpose of healthy eating, share some fantasy adding cartoon characters, and trust me your child will love to hear cartoon stories and will learn from them.

4. Healthy pantry:

One more important thing you should do is to have lots of healthy food items at home. Fill your fridge with fresh fruits, dry fruits, fun veggies, and all other protein-rich food. So whenever your toddler will open the fridge, he will always find something which is good for his health. If your fridge has frozen foods, packaged snacks, and all such things, then your child will always want them. That’s why have a healthy pantry at home.

5. Understanding the situation:

It is very common in children that they will eat a lot one day, and very little the other day. Children’s food intake depends on their mood and can vary from time to time.

If your child overeats

The best suggestion would be, giving small servings more time. Another thing you can do is, turn off the TV while meals. Your child will want to eat until his TV show doesn’t stop.
They are at a young age and this is completely fine. Don’t apply strict restrictions to them.

If your child undereats 

Maintain constant time of eating every day. Which will make your child hungry at the same time regularly. You can also give them some fun snacks at the time of the meal to avoid sleeping empty stomach.
But remember you should not force a lot for eating.

Srushti Sontakke

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