Do you persuade your child to eat at least a couple more spoons and turn on your favorite cartoon?
1. Entertain your child while eating
Of course, it is much easier to feed a child if you turn on a cartoon for him. But often children cannot even remember what they ate at that time. And they do not learn to control the feeling of fullness at all. In the future, this will turn into mindless eating in front of the TV and overeating.
2. Give sweets for snacks
Sweets can have two types of effects:
a) the child will not want to eat healthy food later and will prefer to remain hungry;b) after a jump in blood sugar, its sharp drop will come - the child will feel severe hunger and eat more than necessary.
Each of these cases is not very preferable from the point of view of healthy nutrition and normal well-being of the child.
3. Force you to eat the whole meal
It is hard for parents to trust the child and not force him to finish eating the entire portion to the end. But if you force a child to eat when he is not hungry, this knocks down his natural mechanism of self-regulation and intuitive eating. If the child says that he does not want to eat or has already eaten, trust his words and do not persuade, and even more so do not threaten with punishments.
4. Reward or punish food
To form a healthy relationship with food and healthy eating habits in a child's life, food must not be associated with emotions. It should not be a reward or punishment.
5. Force feeding when sick
Adults are afraid that the child will not have the strength to fight the disease if he does not eat what they consider necessary. If we talk about the usual SARS or flu, then in the most acute period, liquid calories are enough for the child: compote, fruit drink, juice, tea with honey, milk - any liquid that he agrees to. When the state of health improves, the child will ask for food himself.
You will also be interested to read:
- 5 myths about pregnancy nutrition
- 5 healthy eating trends for 2020
- Top 10 Baby Foods
