What if the child is a picky eater?

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Taking care of and raising an anorexic child is a challenge and a struggle for many parents. With these children, you often tend to force them to eat according to your point of view. This often does not give positive results, but even causes a significant impact on the psychology and eating activities of children.

1. The reason why children are picky eaters

Eating solid foods is still a new experience for babies. It may take time for your baby to get used to the different textures, colors, and flavors of new foods. While young children love foods with consistency and are only familiar with the type of food they have eaten.
Toddlers often change their daily eating habits and also often don't try new foods until you have given them many times. This may be partly due to a change in the nutritional needs of toddlers. And at this point the baby is not growing as much as his first year. Therefore, children will be less interested in food and will not eat much.
However, as children grow, they also become more independent and learn to make their own choices about the foods they eat. This is also considered one of the important skills that children will need to develop over the years, especially when it comes to food.
Maybe at this stage, you will help the child from a picky eater to love his food more and cooperate with you in his eating process. This is supposed to be a great time to teach your child to try new things, before you find yourself in a situation where you have to raise a fussy eater and start to refuse new foods as a way of asserting your independence. (a distinct possibility that the child will appear after the child has passed his second birthday). Offer your child a variety of healthy foods regularly to help them discover that their digestive system is ready to introduce new foods to their meals.

2. Some ways to help introduce foods to picky eaters

Children have an innate sense of how much food their bodies need to grow and stay healthy, and along with that, deciding what to eat is up to them. The best thing you can do for your child is to provide them with a variety of healthy choices in a positive, comfortable environment that makes mealtime enjoyable for them.
So, what should a picky child do? Here are some specific tips on how to handle feeding a picky eater:
Structure your child's eating so that he has three meals a day and two healthy snacks between meals. Doctors say that most picky eaters are "junk eaters" - that is, children who eat small amounts of food throughout the day. Carefully preparing your child's meals for meals and snack times will help ensure they'll eat when they're hungry and reduce the chance that they'll snack too much. Serve a variety of healthy foods at each meal. When you offer a new food, simply place it on the tray on your baby's highchair without taking action to force your baby to choose. However, you must make sure the foods you choose are age-appropriate. Offer your child each new food in small amounts. For example, instead of an entire meal of exotic dishes, offer the standard fare or the favorite along with a new one. Always include at least one thing you know your child likes at every meal. Try to schedule a new food when you know your baby is hungry, such as a snack of mango slices when he eats solids in the afternoon. Use toddler sections. The toddler serving size is 1/4 of the adult serving. A serving of meat for a 1-year-old is about the size of the palm of your hand, and a serving of vegetables is only about 1 or 2 tablespoons. Understanding the tastes of some children is more sensitive than adults. Some simply don't like the texture, color or taste of certain foods. That's why a child can claim to not like a food they've never even tried. Likewise, some children may refuse a food because it reminds them of a time when they were sick or because they have some other negative association with it. Find ways to increase the nutritional value of foods your child enjoys. Such as adding some wheat germ or diced chicken to her pasta casserole, pureed vegetables like carrots or spinach to her pasta sauce, and some fruit to her cereal. children's favorites. Resist the urge to give your child sugary foods to try to get them to eat more. You want to develop your child's sense of culinary discovery. Minimize distractions at the dining table. If a sibling is running around nearby or a cartoon beckons from across the room, the toddler may lose interest in the food being served. Create a comfortable and quiet space where your child can enjoy their food.

3. How to help children eat more food

It is unrealistic to expect a toddler to take in a variety of foods. In the long run, you need to be persistent in serving your kids so they can enjoy all kinds of healthy foods both at home and out. This is one of the best ways to help children learn to eat well. But for now, a child's decision to eat only a few things is up to them and it's important for them to learn to make their own decisions about food from the start.
Nancy Hudson, nutritionist at the University of California, Berkeley, says: “A child needs to be in control of what he eats. That's because forcing children to eat foods they don't like or amounts they can't handle can lead to problems later on: Children who aren't allowed to make their own food decisions (such as making food decisions). when they are full) have a higher risk of obesity later in life. Forcing children to try new foods will only make them more stubborn and less open to trying new things in the future.
If your child seems to eat nothing but cheese and crackers for days on end, don't worry. Start recording what your child eats and you'll probably find that he eats all the major food groups and gets the nutrients he needs over the course of a week. Studies from the American Dietetic Association show that children, even those considered by their parents to be picky eaters, often consume a wide variety of foods to meet their nutritional needs.

4. How to tell if a child is really eating enough or a child's development?

You shouldn't panic if it doesn't seem like your baby is growing fast enough. Children don't always develop at a steady rate and there will be times when they don't seem to be growing at all, nor will you grow at nearly the same rate your baby did in the first year of life.
If you are concerned about this, contact your doctor when you think your baby is not gaining enough weight. However, you do not transfer your concerns to your child by forcing him to eat too much or pressuring him to eat.
It's not natural that your child has anorexia, refuses to eat and sometimes cries when it's time to eat. Therefore, parents need to observe and find out the reason why your child has such expressions, thereby offering the best solution so that your child can be happy and excited when it's time to eat. food, helping children to develop comprehensively both physically and mentally. In the case of children with prolonged anorexia, malabsorption, and growth retardation, parents should supplement children with supportive products containing lysine, essential micro-minerals and vitamins such as zinc, chromium, selenium, and B vitamins. help meet the nutritional needs of children. At the same time, these essential vitamins also support digestion, enhance nutrient absorption, help improve anorexia, and help children eat well. Parents can simultaneously apply dietary supplements and functional foods derived from nature for easy absorption. The most important thing is that improving your baby's symptoms often takes a long time. Combining many types of functional foods at the same time or changing many types in a short time can make the baby's digestive system unable to adapt and completely not good. Therefore, parents must be really patient with their children and regularly visit the website vimec.com to update useful baby care information.

Articles refer to the source: Babycenter.com