The mother’s task is always difficult, even more when she is going to convince her kid to eat its vegetables, the legumes, fish, and in general foods it would prefer to avoid! It is a fact that growing a kid is a continuous struggle, however justified at the moment every parent sees its child growing up, developing its thoughts and becoming a useful and complete man!
However, the lunch time (in particular when the child is still in a very young age), for most of the families is a battlefield and the blame goes to parents themselves, for non educating their children the correct way to consume food.
Most of the parents “push” their children (from the young age) to eat their vegetables, using expressions like, “You should eat your vegetables”, “If you do not eat your vegetables you will never grow up”, “Good kids eat always their vegetables”. However, this is not the right way to teach a kid to start loving the good and healthy nutrition (since the parents themselves promote it as something that is rather an obligation, something that is imposed to be done)1
Kids fantasy ……on the table!
Children are the most beautiful beings, because they are pure and full of fantasy. So the meals served to the children should show a fantasy and not being boring, with no taste, and colour!
Plates should have a lot of colours (try to play with the colour combinations in the meals you serve), ensuring a lot of textures (try to have materials with different texture like, vegetable pourée, along with crunchy pieces of fresh vegetables, soft pieces of cheese in cubes and juicy lean meat), carrying a nice aroma, and full taste (choose fresh raw materials and seasonal products of highest quality).
When I should start to worry about my child’s anorexia?
It is true that there are many reasons that a child could present anorexia signs, but which of them should really worry us? Some of the most important and usual reasons that kids are anorectic are the following:
· They want to go for a play
· Are sick or feel a little out of mood
· Feel sad about something
· Have a bad mood
· They are stressed with something
In a calm environment and using the discussion, we must recognize the first signs of the child’s anorexia, we are trying to understand what of the above is the real reason (taking into consideration that our child has healthy nutritional habits and a stable nutritional plan).
We serve a small quantity of food in the child’s dish (so it will not feel as being lost of the high quantity of food seen), while slowly and with no pressure start to feed it.
ATTENTION: We do not promise any rewards to our child for the case it is going to eat everything and surely we never threaten it by various penalties and naturally we never yell at it or start arguing with it!
We use our patience to feed the child the quantity it wants to eat (even if this is just 2 or 3 bites), repeating this task after a while (when it feels hungry again). In the meantime, we are trying through discussion to see what the problem is, and what really caused this anorexia to it.
