How to teach children to eat rice

This is an automatically translated article.

The article is professionally consulted by Master, Doctor Doan Ngoc Quynh Tram - Pediatrician - Neonatologist - Department of Pediatrics - Neonatology - Vinmec Nha Trang International General Hospital
Usually after the age of 19 months, when the child has 16 or more baby teeth, you can start to introduce the baby to the sticky rice so that the baby is strong and healthy. However, teaching children to eat rice is never easy.

1. When to practice for children to eat rice?

Teaching children to eat rice is also a step to show that children have grown up. But not so that you feed your child too soon or too late will adversely affect the health of the child. Because when children do not have enough teeth to be able to chew and crush food, eating rice will make their immature digestive system hurt. On the contrary, if you practice feeding your child rice too late, it will be difficult for the child to adapt to chewing, even the child will be anorexic, making it more difficult for you to practice feeding.
According to medical experts, usually after 19 months of age, when the child has at least 16 baby teeth, you can introduce your baby to pureed rice. By the time the child is 24 months old and has about 20 baby teeth, they can practice giving them soft rice because at this time they already know how to bite and chew to crush food before swallowing them down to the stomach.
After the baby is 30 months old, you can give your child normal rice, but you should choose foods that are easy to chew or chop food for your baby.
When you choose the right time to teach your baby to eat rice, children will be interested in eating, because for children every meal is an interesting learning session, children can explore different flavors, explore Explore the extremely rich culinary world that porridge or powdered snacks cannot satisfy children.

2. How to teach children to eat rice properly?

Besides choosing the right time, you also need to pay attention to how to feed your child, because this greatly affects the child's excitement about food and eating habits later on.
The eating stages of a normal child are eating flour, eating pureed porridge, eating porridge, then eating crushed rice, and finally feeding the child with normal grain rice like an adult. Therefore, you should let your child learn to eat crushed rice first so that he can adapt gradually.
At the getting to know stage, you should not rush to force your child to eat a lot. Children should eat little by little and gradually increase the amount. Children can also eat a meal a day combined with eating porridge as before, in the first week then completely replace porridge.

To create self-disciplined eating habits for children, each meal should only last for 30 minutes. If your child does not swallow or is not interested in the food, then you should not force it, doing so will cause more inhibition and loss of appetite for the child.
During the period of learning to eat, you may have to accept the "sacrifice" of not being able to feed your baby the desired amount and the baby may lose weight. At this time, you should also be firm, should not pity your child, but need to have a consensus in how to learn to feed your baby with other family members to practice self-discipline for children.
You need to keep in mind that it is important to create fun for children to love to eat, to crave for food. When teaching your baby to eat rice, you need to be very patient, do not rush to force your child to eat rice immediately, it will make them afraid and dare not eat rice in the long run.

3. Notes you need to remember when teaching your child to eat rice

A common mistake that many mothers make is that they often grind the rice to a fine powder and then pour the broth into it. This approach makes children very bored and discourages chewing movements in children.
Before meals, you are not allowed to give your baby candy, drink milk... Sweet sugar will make children feel full so they don't want to eat rice or other foods.
Eating rice is like eating solid food, you need to give your baby enough food. Each child's meal should have enough starch (rice), protein (meat, fish, eggs, shrimp, crab, tofu...) and green vegetables.
Protein foods need to be processed soft, cut into small pieces. Foods of the green vegetable group need to be soft, have beautiful colors to attract children, rich in fiber and rich in vitamins. Fatty foods should be selected according to the child's preferences and family economic conditions.
When teaching your baby to eat rice, you need to be flexible in using enough fat in the process of preparing dishes, to meet the great nutritional needs of children in the first years of life.

In order for children not to be afraid of food, you should choose or prepare foods that are suitable for their chewing ability. It is better to stew or cook food more tenderly than it is for adults or chop it up before cooking. However, you need to limit the use of a blender that makes the food too crushed and crumbly. As such, the child will not be able to enjoy the true taste of food and lose the chewing reflex that you are training your baby.
At the stage of learning to eat, your baby will be very excited to try new foods. Therefore, you should also regularly change the way of processing to create a delicious feeling. To make sure your child gets enough nutrients, you should also add snacks with fruit, yogurt, and whey for your child every day. In addition, you should give your child enough water to well absorb nutrients from food and eliminate waste products from the body.
When cooking normal rice for the whole family, you can choose a portion, use a spoon to lightly beat the rice grains, and then boil them again in the rice cooker. Or you can tilt the rice cooker to one side to get a slightly more mushy portion of rice for the child.
A common problem that mothers often have when teaching their children to eat rice grains is to show stress when the child does not like to eat rice, only likes to eat noodles, vermicelli... According to experts, should not be allowed to eat rice. Family atmosphere is too stressful because of children's meals, let children choose what they like.
If your child doesn't like to eat rice, you can give him other dishes that are different from rice but still have enough nutrient groups. For example, if your child likes to eat noodles, you can add more rolls, sausages, eggs to ensure protein, then give them more vegetables and fruits.
You need to be persistent to coax your baby to eat rice even if it's just a little bit first, and then give them the foods they like later to maintain the habit of eating rice. One way to help children learn to eat rice and other foods is to let them eat by themselves and eat together during family meals. Let your child pick up what he wants, even pick up food, don't force him to eat what he doesn't want.
In addition, to improve taste, eat well, reach the correct height and weight, and exceed the standard, have a good immune system, strengthen the resistance to get sick less often and have less digestive problems... baby need additional necessary micronutrients: Zinc, selenium, chromium, vitamins B1 and B6, ginger, acerola fruit extract (vitamin C),...
Also as recommended by leading nutrition experts, For children at this age, parents need to be calm and persistent when supplementing with nutrients, even through food or functional foods. In particular, the use of functional foods should choose those of natural origin that are easily absorbed, do not allow simultaneous use of many types or continuously change the types of functional foods.
Besides, nutrition experts also emphasize on the role of biological zinc, parents should learn and supplement zinc for children properly at the appropriate time, to avoid zinc deficiency affecting to the holistic development of the child.
To have more knowledge about raising children and taking care of children by age, you should regularly visit the website https://vinmec.com and make an appointment with the leading doctors, pediatric experts - Nutrition when visiting the website https://vinmec.com need advice.