As a parent, you face new challenges every day when it comes to raising your child. When they enter the years of toddler-hood there is a whole host of issues that now need to be dealt with; manners, eating habits, behaviour, attitude. It’s easy to say that there’s a lot to remember. When it comes to how and what your toddler is eating, there are some easy-to-manage solutions that can help ease the stress of your day. This blog post is going to look at 8 of the most common toddler eating problems and how to fix them.
Bad manners
Teaching good manners can begin as soon as they’re eating solid foods. Be patient with your toddler and plan how you’re going to tackle their current bad manners. Flinging food around is something that’s likely to drive you crazy, but don’t react, don’t give them the attention their looking for and the likelihood is, the phase will pass.
Constipation
Constipation is one of the most common toddler eating problems and can be rectified easily enough with plenty of fluids, but if your child is still experiencing issues it’s best to address it straight away before the problem becomes worse. Provide your toddler with a good amount of fibre and remove constipating foods like bananas, cheese and rice.
Only eating one or two foods
Unfortunately for many parents, going through a phase where your toddler demands one or two foods is almost unavoidable. The best course of action for this toddler eating problem is to cook less of whatever it is they want.
Alternatively including your child in the preparing of the food is likely to make them proud of their handiwork and will encourage them to eat it.
Only eating junk food
You can’t control what your toddler eats when they’re not at home, so the solution is to reduce the amount of junk food in your house. Provide healthier snack alternatives but don’t cut the junk food out completely. Forbidding food could in fact make matters worse and so provide small treats every now and again.
Picky eating
If your toddler is a picky eater, it can be frustrating to get them to try new foods. Don’t make a fuss if you’ve cooked something new, simply put it on the plate in front of them and leave them to it. Introduce new foods individually and only cook them in small amounts.
Underweight
Being underweight is another common toddler eating problem and more often than not, this is due to very picky eating habits. You can’t force your child to eat what they don’t want so make sure there are a variety of healthy snacks to choose from when they do want to eat.
Overweight
If your child is gaining weight too quickly, don’t put them on a diet. The best course of action is to increase their activity levels. Alternatively, it could be that you need to modify the types of food that they’re eating.
Avoiding a power struggle at meal times
In order to avoid squabbles, try refraining from commenting on the food, or eating habits – even though this may be difficult if your child is a picky eater. It’s important that your child has some degree of control and this might be hard to handle to begin with but toddlers are surprisingly good at self-regulating their food.
Resources: www.babycenter.com/0_how-to-solve-12-toddler-eating-problems_10328741.bc
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