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The seven bad food habits of toddlers

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Have a think about the last time you sat down to dinner with your fussy toddler. Was it a pleasant experience?

I’d hedge a bet that in many of your households, it wasn’t. Feeding one to four-year-old children is hard work, but it’s worth the effort to start building some healthy habits around food for them to grow into healthy adults. What children learn in these early years is vital to their long-term health.

Toddlerhood doesn’t last for long and although you may feel like you’re in survival mode some days, taking a proactive step with your child’s nutrition will pay dividends into both you and your child’s future.

Here are seven bad food habits that you need to correct with your toddler.

Eating in front of the TV

I know it seems like a great way to distract them and get food into them, but it’s a Band-Aid solution that doesn’t address the core reason why they might not be eating and will result in problems later on. Turn off the TV and get your toddler eating by helping them focus on the task at hand.

Helping themselves to the fridge and pantry

Toddlers don’t have the capacity to choose healthy foods for themselves. It’s your job to choose the food for them to eat. Keep the kitchen out of bounds until they are old enough to make decisions for themselves.

Walking around while eating and getting up and down from the table

Use a high chair or other restraint to help them stay at the table and focus on their meal. Give them 15-20 minutes to eat their food. Regardless of whether they eat or not, meal time is then over and they can get down. These clear boundaries around meal times will help them make the most of the times foods are offered and eat it if they’re hungry.

Getting a sweet treat if they eat their vegetables

Don’t use treat foods as a bribe to eat other foods. They either eat the food that you offer them or they don’t. Don’t beg, bribe or coerce them. This just raises the status of the sweet food, making it even more desirable and the other food even more of a chore.

Eating the same things all the time

If you want your child to eat a variety of different foods you have to constantly make a variety of foods available to them. Just because they refuse a food, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer it again. You need to keep trying. If your child says “I don’t like that”, simply reply “That’s ok” and keep putting it on their plate.

Eating too much fruit

Some toddlers love fruit so much that they’ll happily eat it all day. Fruit is healthy, but you shouldn’t build their whole diet out of fruit. They need other nutrients in their diet that fruit doesn’t offer. Too much fruit can upset their tummy and in some cases increase their risk of iron deficiency. Toddlers don’t need any more than one large piece of fruit per day.

Getting an alternative if they don’t eat what’s offered

A perfectly healthy child will become fussy if frequently offered an alternative meal if they refuse what’s initially offered. If you always bring out their favourite when they screw up their nose to something else, they’ll quickly learn that repeating this behaviour gets them what they want.

Isn’t fussiness normal?

It’s completely normal for toddlers to be picky about their food, refuse to eat some meals and like a food one day and hate it the next. Problems arise when, as parents, we don’t respond to this behaviour appropriately and the child starts to develop bad habits and then becomes a little stuck in their ways.

If you’re feeling like your child is getting fussier and fussier and slowly backing themselves into a corner of not wanting to eat very much at all, then you’d greatly benefit from a workshop I’m running on Wednesday 29th March at 7.30pm. This two-hour session will equip you with all the information and practical advice you need to change the food life of your toddler. Here’s what a past parent has said about the workshop:

“Thank you so much for holding the course. I walked away feeling so positive and confident that I can finally get my 2.5-year-old to eat fruit and vegetables again. I haven’t felt this positive regarding meal times for 12 months. Everything you said made perfect sense – thank you!!!”

the essentials

When: Wednesday 29th March, 7.30 – 9.30pm
Where: The Healthy Eating Hub – 83/170 Flemington Road, Harrison.
Cost: $80 per person (wine & snacks provided – because you’re out of the house without your toddler!)
Register here.

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