How To Encourage Your Kids To Eat Well
Wren, designer and manufacturer of kitchen cabinets and furniture, has collaborated with some of the UK’s top parenting bloggers to create a foodie eBook filled with kid-friendly recipes. According to a recent study, nearly half of UK parents admit it is a daily struggle to get their families eating healthy and nutritious meals. In an extract from the eBook, blogger and mother of three Leyla shares her top tips to help encourage little ones eat up.
Both of my girls and very independent and strong-minded. They know what they want and what they like. This can often make meal times tricky; putting a plate of food in front of them is often met with a refusal to eat. Nevertheless, there are numerous tips and tricks to get around this. Here’s my top four:
1. Involvement
When we go food shopping, the girls have their own lists (which are a part of my main list) of food they have to find and put in the trolley. This keeps them entertained in the supermarket and involves them in the buying process.
They also help with food preparation, from steps as simple as helping to get the good out of the fridge to chopping up vegetables.
2. Have a theme
If it is possible, we have a theme for our meals. This works really well at lunchtime, as it can help make a simple sandwich much more fun and appealing. All you really need is a variety of biscuit cutters. We recently had a woodland-theme lunch and the girls used cutters they associated with woodland.
Choosing the theme and cutters as well as cutting out the shapes gives them a great sense of achievement, and they feel much more involved in the process.
3. Visual
Children are visual eaters. If it looks appealing, they want to eat it. If they have decided they want a rabbit-shaped sandwich and have taken great care in making the rabbit shape, they are much more likely to eat it.
4. Portion Size
I have found that if I put a plate of food in front of them, they say no, but if I put food into small bowls and make it seem like a picnic or a party, they eat a lot more. They then have a choice as to how much to eat and what to eat, but have much more fun in doing so.
