What should parents do if their children are picky eaters?

Children's picky eating is a very troublesome thing for parents. Often, even if they try their best, they still cannot stimulate their children's appetite. Everyone knows that children's picky eating is a very bad habit. Our children aged 1-7 have some picky eating phenomena. How can parents effectively help children correct their picky eating habits? Let us give you a detailed introduction below, hoping it will be helpful for your child’s picky eating.

1. Parents should set a good example

A baby's eating habits are greatly influenced by their parents. If you carefully observe many picky eaters, you will find that their parents also have some eating habits. If parents are picky about food, or say in front of their baby that a certain food is not tasty, the baby will be directly affected. In addition, if parents do not like to eat a certain food, the family will rarely buy this food, which will indirectly cause the child to have a picky eating habit. Therefore, for babies who are influenced by adults' eating habits, parents should set a good example and lead by example. Only if you stop being picky about food can you encourage your baby to eat properly. For the baby's health, parents should adjust their eating habits and not let their eating habits affect the baby. They should strive to ensure that the baby gets comprehensive and rich nutrition.

2. Develop the habit of eating on time

In many families, babies cannot eat on time and in the right amount, or they eat too many snacks, which will affect the baby's dining habits over time. The baby's stomach is small, and it takes 3 or 4 hours for the food in the stomach to be emptied. When it is time to eat, the baby will feel hungry and the food will taste good. If children do not eat on time, but drink all kinds of drinks and snacks at random, there will always be food in the stomach and the stomach will not get any rest. Then, at mealtime, they will have no appetite and will have no appetite for even the best food, so they will naturally be picky. To deal with such babies, we need to find ways to change their bad eating habits, let them eat less snacks, eat on time, and eat enough at each meal.

3. Food should be processed skillfully

Babies’ taste is different from that of adults. They need light, sweet food. For foods that babies don’t like, you need to work more on the cooking methods, pay attention to color matching, appropriate seasoning, or changing the shape, etc. Try to cook the meal as deliciously as possible, change the styles, make it look good and smell good when cooking, use multiple methods to prepare one dish, and give it nice names to arouse children's curiosity and interest, so that they will want to eat, love to eat, and eat more.

4. Supplement nutrients and pay attention to taste

For the health of their babies, many parents will supplement their babies with nutrients, such as calcium. But when choosing calcium supplements, people don’t pay attention to taste. Some mothers believe that babies prefer sweet and sour calcium supplements. In fact, the baby's taste buds are in a period of rapid development, and the taste they are most likely to accept is milk. Excessive taste stimulation will cause the baby's taste buds to become unresponsive and easily lead to picky eating. Therefore, you should choose calcium supplements with light milk flavor or no flavor for your baby. Your baby will like it and it will not harm your taste buds.

When helping children correct their picky eating habits, it takes a process for them. Many children cannot change all at once, so this also requires long-term persistence and help from parents. For foods that children don’t like very much, parents can use different ways to attract children to eat them. They can encourage children to eat a small amount of food that they don’t usually like. Gradually, children will get used to it and change their picky eating habits.