Three Tips for Helping your Child Build a Healthy Relationship with Food

We have all dealt with our fair share of nagging and tantrums when it comes to food or dinner time. Sometimes encouraging your child to eat food is no less than a battleground.

So here are three tips which will help you develop a healthy relationship between your child and their eating habits:

1. Don’t make hard and fast rules
More often than not, parents make rules like, eat this but not that – however, by doing so you are moulding rebellion. Ensure you child tries everything, and there are obviously certain veggies and fruit they need to eat. But if there are a few foods they don’t like, that’s okay; we all have our preferences.

2. Don’t let them Rule the Roost
A little bit contradictory to the first point, but it’s important not to only feed children the food they want. If your child only wants to eat cheese and bread, this isn’t a healthy and balanced diet. So, don’t force them to eat absolutely everything, but don’t let them eat whatever they want – it’s a fine line and it’s not easy. We, at kindergarten in Springfield support healthy and balanced diets for both adults and children – ensure that while you’re not too hard on your children, that they are consuming a healthy mix of veggies, fruit, protein, calcium, fats and carbohydrates.

3. Treat your Children
We all know the love that children have for junk food, and it is a difficult line to walk. Try to prepare healthy snacks for your children like peanut butter and banana options or Nutella and strawberries on rice cakes. Occasional treats are fine and encouraged, because otherwise if your children never get to eat chocolate for example, they may develop a tendency to binge at parties or on play dates (whenever they are away from home). The team at day care centre Karana encourage everything in moderation, a balanced diet is key.

Bottom Line:
So, these were a few ways in which you can foster a healthy relationship between your child/children and their food habits. Also, be persistent; it might be a rocky road, but eventually your children will be healthy and happy – every parents first priority.