Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Toddler Eating Habits Tips

So, I didn't mean to call my ENTIRE blog Early Potty Training.  I'm a licensed massage therapist, I don't "do" computers. So forgive me :)

The title of this post, if I knew how to give it an official title:

Quick background: I have severe health problems and other health problems (including diabetes) runs in my family so healthy eating habits are extremely important to me.

Everyone that knows my daughter knows that she is a piggy!!! We don't know where it all goes because she is still pretty lean but WOW!  I do believe that, for the most part, I am just lucky to have a hearty eater but thought I'd share some of my tips and hope you can share some tips with me as well.  I'm sure my daughter will go through picky eating phases and I want as much advice as possible!

First of all, I completely believe in consistency.  I know we hear this all the time but I feel like many people struggle with this and don't always know when or how to follow through with consistency.  I know I struggle with being consistent as well.

My daughter has a schedule/routine that we stick to 99% of the time (obviously when she's ill or for certain occasions this is altered).  So that is part of our consistency.  The other consistent thing we do for our daughter (almost 18 months) is EVERY lunch and dinner we first offer her veggies.  While she eats (or sometimes doesn't eat and just plays), I go back into the kitchen and continue making the rest of her meal.  Typically, she shares whatever I am also eating but there are times I am just not eating at the same time or my meal is far to spicy (we love spicy in this house).  Once her meal is ready, I kind of determine if she is finished w the veggies before I actually bring it to her.

(Even if little one doesn't take to a certain food the first few times, still offer it occasionally.  Their tastes and preferences change a lot from day to day!)

If she is clearly done but has left overs, I mix her veggies in w her main course.  When she still allowed me to feed her, I would actually mix the veggies on the spoon or fork w her main course.  She watched me always put the left over peas/green beans/etc on the spoon w her meal and over time insisted SHE wanted to be the one to place her veggies on the utensil.  Very adorable :)  So she was even tricking herself into eating them.

Once she is done w her meal, I offer her some fruit.  When she is all finished w that and if she has done very well w her meal, I offer her a "cookie" (typically an animal cracker or something like that).

I asked her doctor if it was okay to not offer her other foods if she isn't taking to what we are eating.  Because she is a healthy size, the doctor did okay for me to do this.  There are some things I just already know she isn't interested in (though I will still offer it to her if we are having it) and we avoid having that as her main meal.  Also, because she is still so young and not able to completely communicate, we still offer her snacks between meals, especially when she didn't care for the meal we offered her, but we make sure there is plenty of a gap so it doesn't seem like she is getting a replacement meal, make sense?

Another trick: When we started solid foods, we started w just pureed veggies and fruits.  Around nine months, we had her checked for food allergies and after that, started introducing a little bit of other foods as well.  Every time we sat down to feed her, we would first offer her puree veggies and always end w puree fruit.

Also, everyone kept asking me what my daughter's favorite juice was and I still hadn't offered her juice.  In f ear that I was keeping my daughter from something she needed, I talked w her doctor again.  She told me that juice really should only be used for medicinal purposes and to continue offering water.

Since my daughter first started on solid foods, I kept a sippy cup of water available for her to drink at her leisure and had one handy while feeding her solids as well.  I still do this with her and she now drinks 20+ oz a day!  On a couple of occasions, I have offered her juice (watered down a bit) and she just isn't interested most of the time. This is actually a good thing because she gets most of her calories from her actual food and isn't developing the craving for sweet/tart things as much.

So these are my tips to encouraging healthy eating for toddlers.  Please share any suggestions that you have had success with with your little ones!

1 comment:

  1. I was inspired to share this today because, well, a lot of people have wondered what I do to feed my daughter but for lunch today, I offered my daughter peas. She didn't seem interested at first but I asked her where her mouth was, she pointed, then I said "Put a pea in your mouth!" Which she did and we both smiled and I went back to making her meal. She scarfed down ALL the peas before I could finish heating up her turkey meatballs (a new favorite of hers). She ate TWO meatballs then also finished up some berries I gave her! Then was signing "please" because she wanted more food!

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