The food educates, but also rude: eat everything ... and everything!
Young children make progress with food as they progress: little by little, your child will be able to not dirty all the bib, move to the napkin, cut the meat, handle the cutlery, pass the trona to the chair, from the plastic glass to the glass ...
All these educational advances in relation to food will satisfy you greatly, will make you feel older and we will have the opportunity to emphasize all that affect the good manners at the table: eat with your mouth closed, postures, ask for things .. .
In addition, we can make the table a family meeting place, where everyone can participate in the conversation. Although it is more comfortable to set aside the smallest to eat, it is preferable that they join our schedule as soon as possible, and that they feel led by the example of the elderly. This will also help the elders to divert our attention to him, and not feel pressured and distressed.
Ideas to motivate the taste for certain foods
In addition to pure obedience, we can also use some persuasion so that the little one eats with more illusion. Depending on your age, you may be prepared to understand the virtues of some foods, and to play to make parallels: carrots to see better, spinach to have muscles, orange to have more energy ...
You will also like to participate in small contests with all the members of the family and make bets to see who likes more an unknown dish that mom will experience, or who remembers before another dish that could be similar ... In this way, they learn to distinguish flavors, and they become bolder to try new recipes or dishes that are unfamiliar to them.
We can also allow you to collaborate in giving the presentation details to the dishes, because it will make you more involved and feel more involved.
Tips for children to eat everything ... and everything!
1. Subtract importance to the act of food, so that the child perceives that you will not pay more attention than the essential during this time, and try to finish as soon as possible to play with you.
2. Little or much, as they wish, children have to eat everything. They should at least take a small portion of each of the dishes that make up the menu.
3. A rule can always be to serve little, and give option to repeat if you like it a lot. Where there is no discussion is in the fact of eating everything that is on the plate.
4. Systematically disguise battered fish with tomato sauce, so that it does not distinguish the flavor can help the child to be nourished, but not educated. What happens if one day there is no tomato at home or they invite us to eat out? Teach him to eat.
5. Do not let the lunch hour It becomes a drama whose protagonist is the child. Maybe this is how you are helping him achieve what he wanted: to enjoy your individualized attention for a while.
6. Eye with the pecking. Maybe you should eliminate the morning snack to eat at noon, but you can not replace the lunch menu with a donut.
7. Be flexible when thinking about the menu, allowing the child to express their preferences, for example, for Sunday lunch. But stay firm the rest of the days and do not allow me to substitute the dish that you do not like for a fried egg, even if it does not cost you anything to do it.
Give a maximum of 30 minutes to each dish, and then remove it full or empty. If you did not eat it, do not let it go to the next and - naturally and without anger on your part - make it wait until dinner, which will start with the dish you left. There will be no danger and, in any case, we can remember that we know more examples of capricious and rude children than malnourished children ...
Marisol Nuevo Espín
