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All this is not to say that parents shouldn't encourage
their toddlers to eat well and develop healthy food
habits. Based on our hands-on experience with eight
children, we've developed 17 tactics to tempt little
taste buds and minimize mealtime hassles.
1. Offer a nibble tray. Toddlers like to graze their way
through a variety of foods, so why not offer them a
customized smorgasbord? The first tip from the Sears'
kitchen is to offer toddlers a nibble tray. Use an
ice-cube tray, a muffin tin, or a compartmentalized
dish, and put bite-size portions of colorful and
nutritious foods in each section. Call these finger
foods playful names that a two-year-old can appreciate,
such as: Give the foods fun names, such as avocado boats
(a quarter of an avocado sectioned lengthwise), banana
or cooked carrot wheels, broccoli trees, cheese blocks,
little O's (O-shaped cereal), canoe eggs (hard-boiled
eggs cut lengthwise in wedges), moons (peeled apple
slices, thinly spread with peanut butter), or shells and
worms (different shapes of pasta).
Place the food on an easy-to-reach table. As your
toddler makes his rounds through the house, he can stop,
sit down, nibble a bit, and, when he's done, continue on
his way. These foods have a table-life of an hour or
two.
2. Dip it. Young children think that immersing foods in
a tasty dip is pure fun (and delightfully messy). Some
possibilities to dip into: cottage cheese or tofu dip,
cream cheese, fruit juice-sweetened preserves, peanut
butter, thinly spread, pureed fruits or vegetables,
yogurt, plain or sweetened with juice concentrate, Those
dips serve equally well as spreads on apple or pear
slices, bell-pepper strips, rice cakes, bagels, toast,
or other nutritious platforms.
3. Spread it. Toddlers like spreading, or more
accurately, smearing. Show them how to use a table knife
to spread cheese, peanut butter, and fruit concentrate
onto crackers, toast, or rice cakes.
4. Top it. Toddlers are into toppings. Putting
nutritious, familiar favorites on top of new and
less-desirable foods is a way to broaden the finicky
toddler's menu. Favorite toppings are yogurt, cream
cheese, melted cheese, guacamole, tomato sauce,
applesauce, and peanut butter.
5. Drink it. If your youngster would rather drink than
eat, don't despair. Make a smoothie – together. Milk and
fruit – along with supplements such as juice, egg
powder, wheat germ, yogurt, honey, and peanut butter –
can be the basis of very healthy meals. So what if they
are consumed through a straw? One note of caution: Avoid
any drinks with raw eggs or you'll risk salmonella
poisoning.
6. Cut it up. How much a child will eat often depends on
how you cut it. Cut sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, and
pizza into various shapes using cookie cutters.
7. Package it. Appearance is important. For something
new and different, why not use your child's own toy
plates for dishing out a snack? Our kids enjoy the
unexpected and fanciful when it comes to serving dishes
– anything from plastic measuring cups to ice-cream
cones. You can also try the scaled-down approa
8. Vegetables require some creative marketing, as they
seem to be the most contested food.
Plant a garden with your child. She will probably be much more interested
in eating what she has helped to grow.
Slip grated or diced vegetables into favorite foods. Use
vegetables as finger foods and dip them in a favorite
sauce or dip. Using a small cookie cutter, cut the
vegetables into interesting shapes.
Steam your greens. They are much more flavorful and
usually sweeter than when raw.
9. Share it. If your child is going through a
picky-eater stage, invite over a friend who is the same
age or slightly older whom you know "likes to eat." Your
child will catch on. Group feeding lets the other kids
set the example.
10. Respect tiny tummies. Keep food servings small.
Wondering how much to offer? Here's a rule of thumb –
or, rather, of hand. A young child's stomach is
approximately the size of his fist. So dole out small
portions at first and refill the plate when your child
asks for more.
11. Make it accessible. Give your toddler shelf space.
Reserve a low shelf in the refrigerator for a variety of
your toddler's favorite (nutritious) foods and drinks.
Whenever she wants a snack, open the door for her and
let her choose one. This tactic also enables children to
eat when they are hungry, an important step in acquiring
a healthy attitude about food.
12. Use sit-still strategies. One reason why toddlers
don't like to sit still at the family table is that
their feet dangle. Try sitting on a stool while eating.
You naturally begin to squirm and want to get up and
move around. Children are likely to sit and eat longer
at a child-size table and chair where their feet touch
the ground.
13. Turn meals upside down. The distinctions between
breakfast, lunch, and dinner have little meaning to a
child. If your youngster insists on eating pizza in the
morning or fruit and cereal in the evening, go with it –
better than her not eating at all. This is not to say
that you should become a short-order cook, filling lots
of special requests, but why not let your toddler set
the menu sometimes? Other family members will probably
enjoy the novelty of waffles and hash browns for dinner.
14. Let them cook. Children are more likely to eat their
own creations, so, when appropriate, let your child help
prepare the food. Use cookie cutters to create edible
designs out of foods like cheese, bread, thin meat
slices, or cooked lasagna noodles. Give your assistant
such jobs as tearing and washing lettuce, scrubbing
potatoes, or stirring batter. Put pancake batter in a
squeeze bottle and let your child supervise as you
squeeze the batter onto the hot griddle in fun shapes,
such as hearts, numbers, letters, or even spell the
child's name.
15. Make every calorie count. Offer your child foods
that pack lots of nutrition into small doses. This is
particularly important for toddlers who are often as
active as rabbits, but who seem to eat like mice.
Nutrient-dense foods that most children are willing to
eat include: Avocados , Pasta, Broccoli, Peanut butter,
Brown rice and other grains, Potatoes, Cheese, Poultry,
Eggs, Squash, Fish, Sweet potatoes, Kidney beans, Tofu,
Yogurt
16. Count on inconsistency. For young children, what and
how much they are willing to eat may vary daily. This
capriciousness is due in large part to their ambivalence
about independence, and eating is an area where they can
act out this confusion. So don't be surprised if your
child eats a heaping plateful of food one day and
practically nothing the next, adores broccoli on Tuesday
and refuses it on Thursday, wants to feed herself at one
meal and be totally catered to at another. As a parent
in our practice said, "The only thing consistent about
toddler feeding is inconsistency." Try to simply roll
with these mood swings, and don't take them personally.
17. Relax. Sometime between her second and third
birthday, you can expect your child to become set in her
ideas on just about everything – including the way food
is prepared. Expect food fixations . If the peanut
butter must be on top of the jelly and you put the jelly
on top of the peanut butter, be prepared for a protest.
It's not easy to reason with an opinionated
two-year-old. Better to learn to make the sandwich the
child's way. Don't interpret this as being stubborn.
Toddlers have a mindset about the order of things in
their world. Any alternative is unacceptable. This is a
passing stage.
Don't forget that children love to dip. Reserve one or
two compartments in the tray for your child's favorite
dips, such as yogurt or guacamole (without the spices).
Encourage the child to sit and nibble from the tray
frequently throughout the day, especially late in the
morning and in the mid-to-late afternoon, when the fuel
from the previous meal begins to wear off. Shorten the
spacing between feedings and you are less likely to have
spacey children.
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