Learning to try new foods and developing new tastes is another part of your child’s development as a toddler or preschooler. Many caregivers and parents rightly worry about their child’s eating habits. Considering the old adage “you are what you eat,” adults want their children to have healthy and nutritious diets.

Before we go any further on this subject, consider these facts about your young child’s eating habits:

• Your child’s stomach is only the size of an adult’s fist. It is not as big as an adult’s stomach and cannot hold as much food. Serve smaller portions to children.
• Eating five or six small meals is a good option for kids. You can also considering having three larger meals with two to three healthy snacks in between.
• Children are very active during the day. Consequently, they burn many calories and need to continually refurnish what was burned off.

You can help create healthy eating habits for your child.

As your child matures, she is more likely to become a healthier eater. To allow your child to explore new foods, consider the following tips:

• Avoid mealtime battles (such as continually telling her to eat) since no one wins. Instead, respect your child’s appetite, or lack thereof.
• Toddlers like to binge on one food at a time. They might only enjoy fruits one day and vegetables the next. Toddlers need 1,300 calories a day, but sometimes might not eat this much. In this stage, adults should focus on making sure their children have an all-around nutritionally balanced diet, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be balanced each day.
• Offer your toddlers opportunities to graze throughout the day. This will also help improve your toddler’s behavior. With a consistent opportunity to eat, a toddler will eat when she is hungry and stop when she is not.
• Food for toddlers should be bite-sized to make it easier to eat. Cut up bites of banana, baby carrots, broccoli crowns, eggs or apples for your child. For fun, put these in an ice cream tray (the spaces allow you to easily separate the foods) and allow your child to choose which food she desires when she is hungry.
• Young children enjoy dipping foods into toppings like cottage cheese, guacamole, hummus, peanut butter, yogurt or natural fruit preserves, to name a few. If a child can dip fruits or veggies, she might be more likely to eat them.
• Blend fruits into a smoothie. You can put many nutritious ingredients into the smoothie so experiment with what you like. We make ours in the blender and add a base of milk, yogurt or orange juice. Please note you will need to have a good quantity of liquid in the blender (at least covering the fruit) to make a smoothie with a nice consistency.

Be patient with your toddler as she tries new foods. A child might put a new food in her mouth and quickly take it out, look at it, smell it and/or touch it. This is normal. Offer the food again later and see if she accepts it. One of the most important things an adult can do is be a good role model by eating healthy foods and tasting new options. This shows your child that it is good to try something different.

Another tip is to allow your children to help prepare meals and shop for groceries. You can also plant a garden and encourage the child to taste what you grew together. When your child helps in the preparation she will be more apt to try the new foods she helped make or grow. A different option is to give her a cookie cutter and allow her to cut shapes into the food. She might find the food more desirable if it is in a special shape.

Don’t worry about your child’s nutrition on a daily basis — as long as your child is eating well and has a healthy overall diet, she should be okay. Avoid offering desserts or other sweet treats as a reward for clean plates as this can lead to childhood obesity. Offer your child options to experience nutritious foods in bite-sized pieces. Soon, she will develop the healthy eating habits you desire.

© Let’s Talk Kids, LLC 2012