FEEDING YOUR CHILD

Small children are on the whole no admirers of five star cookery, so it’s unwise to be too ambitious in your cooking projects. You could very well find that your hours of slaving away in the kitchen will be greeted by little more than a loud “Yuk” and no amount of hassling or aeroplane noise will get the food down the throat.





Here is some choice feeding tidbits from our toddler taming technique which should make gastronomic life simpler:



The concept of a varied mixed diet is lot on most young children. Neither they nor their stomach, mind a bit of nourishing monotony.



Food is there to be enjoyed, do not use to feed some parental obsession. Good health is not measured by the enormity of intake, it is seen as energy and a mischievous zest for life.



Children tastes are different from adults. There is no reason why they should enjoy the same sort of food as your sophisticated palate has grown used to.



While it makes for simpler life if your child eats three meals a day along with the rest of the family, healthy snacks throughout the day are just as nutritious and if that’s the only way you are going to get her to eat, then as that stage it’s better left like that.



If the child is very fussy, you don’t have to confine her to strips of raw celery, carrots and raisins. Sandwiches, cheese and biscuits, a cold sausage or small pieces of meat are equally good.



Remember, milk is a high calorie food. If the child is being given too much, the body won’t see the need for three big meals a day. If you want to make a more balanced feeding pattern, you may have to cut down on the milk.



If your child refuses her meal, you shouldn’t throw a tantrum. Put it aside, but don’t offer her any alternatives. When hunger pains return, re-introduce the meal. If she is hunger she will eat it eventually. If she ever catches wind of the fact that there may be an alternative to what have served up, your culinary life for the years to come will be made a hell when she demands a replacement meal.



If a child intends to eat, she will eat. Making aeroplane noises wont help your child’s appetite. Save the entertaining performance for play time.



Be assured that no child has ever starved to death through stubbornness, that’s a pastime reserved solely for adult activists.