Many veteran parents would have experienced that dinner table has always been a battlefield between their children and themselves. I once read a story told by Dr. James Dobson (A famous psychologist, founder of daily radio program called Focus of the Family) about a three-year-old was determined not to eat his green peas, despite the insistence of his father. Although his father was successful and put the squishy peas into the child’s tiny mouth after a hour of threatening and cajoling, the tearful child wouldn’t swallow them at all. The struggle went on for quite a long time. The parents eventually had no choice but to put the child to bed with the peas still in his mouth. The next morning, the mother found a little pile of mushy peas that had been expelled at the foot of the bed!

Although not every child is this tough, a parent can never easily win by forcing a child to eat. Many of toddlers will gladly do battle over food, especially vegetables. What a parent can get is only frustration, feeling of being a looser and a hurting relationship from the battle over food. The worst side of forcing a child to eat is just to associate some very negative experiences with the food you want them to eat. Once the association of the negative experience with the food is built up, it is very hard to turn it around.

There are many other effective ways to deal with a picky eating child:

• To set good food before him. Make food enjoyable and appeal to eyes. Don’t just boil or steam the vegetables. It tastes weird for a child. A simple way of cooking tasteful vegetables is to use chicken soup to boil or simmer. It works for many children. Try this to see if this works for your own child.
• Try to make eating food as a play-time. For example, ask your toddlers to help make dumplings, pizzas, or pies in which you can put some delicious meats and vegetables. Most of them will pick and eat the dumplings they made themselves.
• Understand rewards always have more power than nagging or threatening. Do not give him snacks, sweets or confectionery food before meals, only after finishing his meals as a reward. When my son was a toddler, he will eat whatever I gave him as long as he knew he could get something he likes to drink or eat after finishing his meal.
• Set a model of enjoying eating yourself. From your words and facial expressions, your child will be influenced by you eventually.
• Be consistence, but flexible. Parents should have the goal of bringing up a healthy child in mind. There are many different choices of healthy food and different cooking methods to feed your child. So bring more varieties into your daily menu.
• Use some “tricks” that work. A food processor can “trick” your toddler to eat healthy food. If your toddler only like eating eggs, meat, let them eat as much as they want. Grind the green things into it so that he cannot detect them easily.
• Get some resources and support. There are lots of simple and easy recipes to help you cook good food for children. You can easily find them on the internet for free, such as Choice Australia and New Zealand Beef and Lamb, which contains simple recipes especially for beef & lamb lovers.

Resources

Organic Baby and Toddler Cookbook (Organic)

Feel free to share your own ideas of how to train your kid to eat healthy food. Or you may send us some recipes that will appeal to the tiny mouths.

Related posts:

What Causes Picky Eating

Solving Your Child’s Eating Problems

10 Healthy Foods for Finicky Toddlers

Toddlers’ Favorite Foods Around the World

MedlinePlus - Age-appropriate Diet for Children

Recipes for Kids at Different Ages

What To Do When Your Toddler Won’t Eat

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 6:33 am and is filed under 02-03 yrs: Toddler, 03-05 yrs: Preschooler, Behavior, Eating, Health & Safety, How-to Tips. 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.