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Good eating habits need to be inculcated since childhood, but when children crib about the food served to them, maintaining a healthy diet becomes a Herculean task. But wait, there’s always a hack for simplifying complicated things, isn’t it? Children love practical things, and monotonous meal routines won’t do any good to their refusal to eat healthy.
Here are some dos and don’ts to remember before you formulate a diet for your children-
- Teach satiety and self-regulation of food:
Satiation means the signals and processes that occur during the course of a meal bringing it to an end, while satiety refers to those processes and signals inhibit eating before the feeling of hunger is realized again. Children should be taught to analyze the energy content of their meals to avoid overeating.
- Keep gadgets off the dining table:
Having food while watching cartoons on tablets, phones or television may be a way to feed children without any fuss, but this is certainly not a healthy habit. Children tend to get distracted and they do not realize what and how much they are eating.
- Prioritize meals:
Mealtime should not feel like a burden to children when they have to take a break from studies or playtime to eat food, rather it should be something they look forward to. Parents can make that happen by engaging in delightful conversations with their children at this time by asking them what they did at school or what games they played with their friends. To simplify it further, parents can maintain a food chart for kids so that the meals are prioritized properly.
- Letting kids choose:
Imposing your food choices on kids is not very advisable. You can take suggestions for tiffin ideas for toddlers from other parents or nutritionists or ask kids what they want for lunch or dinner or surprise them by cooking their favourite food. This would develop a sense of respect and they won’t nag much when you ask them to eat healthy.
- Don’t be impatient:
Kids are tough to deal with, but shouting at them or hitting them is the worst way to make them eat. Try out different dishes to feed them each day and make them comfortable so it gets to their taste buds. Who knows, you might discover many of their new favourites.
- Don’t serve what they already like:
If you cook what they like already, the purpose of introducing them to new and exciting flavors with a hint of nutrition would be defeated. Try out new dishes and narrate them stories or eat that dish with them so that they wish to eat it too.
- Don’t use rewards as baits:
While rewarding children with treats is good, make sure you don’t overdo it since that is what they will learn. Eventually, children would ask you to treat them with junk often as a prerequisite to have home-cooked food.
These are some of the dos and don’ts that will help parents in managing their kids’ diet and ensure a great nutritional time for them.
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