Feeding kids is a battle most parents know about. How do you get them to eat good healthy food

The important thing is not to stress when they don’t want to eat. Small children, in particular, follow their instincts when it comes to eating. Sometimes they need a lot; sometimes they just don’t need much. Trying to bribe them with things that aren’t a normal part of their diet, in long run, will do more harm than good.

Food can soon become a source of power for young child, a way of getting what they want, a way of manipulating you. Never use food as a bribe.

When offering different foods to a child, just so they will eat something, idea of not listening to your bodies needs is introduced. We are on our way to developing fussy eaters. A vicious cycle has begun.

I have heard of many different eating patterns of children, and it is obvious where these eating patterns have begun. One family, children wouldn’t eat vegetables unless they were smothered in honey. You must ask “Where did they get idea of putting honey on their vegetables in first place?” Other kids won’t eat anything but junk food; they have to have their daily supply of chips and/or lollies.

If parents want to be able to make best use of time with their children, then it is crucial for a parent to start becoming alert to state that their children are in. Tired? Satisfied? Bored? His shoe hurts him? She has a stomachache from spaghetti? And so on....This applies particularly during time that children are playing with toys. They want to be happy. And you want them to be happy too..

Here’s one way of looking at it: it’s a bit like dealing with a baby. Your baby cries. So you figure, usually and probably it’s one of four things. One, baby is hungry. Two, baby needs a diaper change.Three, baby is tired. Or four, baby wants to be held. You would probably test each of these out to see if baby will stop crying. What’s happening here is a continual process of trying to figure out and be sensitive to the baby’s needs. Right? So we are dealing with a sensitivity to child, and a willingness to experiment to find out exactly what baby needs. Once thing is done (for example, changed a dirty diaper and put on a clean one) and baby stops crying, and is now smiling and gurgling, you think: “Bingo! I did right thing there!”.

So checklist is a key to a parent’s success, because it provides parent with various possibilities of dealing with a baby’s (or child’s) needs.

As babies turn into toddlers who turn into pre-schoolers who turn into kids (and so on), their needs naturally get more sophisticated. In order to keep up with their kids, parents need to increase their checklist. Not only that, but to change checklist as kids grow, as some needs get taken off list and others get put on. So it helps to start off with this idea of a checklist for each of your children. It can be simply a mental checklist. For those who are more organized, they can write it down.