What to do if a five-year-old child has a picky eater

Many children will have picky eating habits. There are many reasons for this. If a child has severe picky eating habits, parents should take the child to the hospital to check whether it is caused by zinc deficiency in the body. If the child's gastrointestinal tract is not good, it can also cause picky eating and anorexia. Another common reason is that it has a lot to do with the child’s eating habits, which requires parents to slowly adjust the diet structure to help their children get rid of the habit of picky eating.

A reasonable and balanced diet should include these types of food, which are the layers of the food pyramid: grains and potatoes, vegetables and fruits, fish, poultry, meat, eggs, milk, soybeans and their products. Therefore, strictly speaking, a child can only be considered a "picky eater" if he eats very little or does not eat a certain type (or layer) of food. In daily life, if your child shows any of the following "symptoms", you should pay attention to whether your child has a "picky eating habit".

Symptom 1: Every time you eat, you don’t eat the rice or noodles in the small bowl, you feel full just by eating the meat.

Symptom 2: When seeing vegetables, either you don’t eat them or you hold them in your mouth, smack the taste and then spit them out.

Symptom three: He loves eating eggs, at least three or four a day, and his burps all smell like eggs. It's always difficult to poop.

Symptom 4: Craving for fried foods, the amount eaten in one go can equal a day's meal intake.

Symptom 5: Love to drink milk, eat yogurt, sip "milk shakes", and don't eat properly.

Of course, there are also babies who only like to eat rice soaked in water and don’t eat vegetables. They also have a tendency to be picky eaters.

Improve cognition: Children's picky eating is a creative expression in life and a cognitive bias. Preschool children are in the transition stage from figurative thinking to abstract thinking, and are beginning to develop from sensory experience to abstract understanding. Parents can tell their children about the harm of picky eating on growth and development, why people need a variety of nutrients, and describe the consequences of picky eating, so that children can recognize the harm of picky eating and correct bad habits.

Hunger method: As the saying goes, "hungry people will eat anything", hunger can increase children's demand for food. If there are no shrimps on the table and your child doesn't want to eat, let him be. Wait until the child says he is hungry, then serve the original meal to him.

For a five-year-old child, who has a certain cognitive ability, if parents can patiently explain to the child the harm of picky eating and encourage the child to eat properly, it can play a certain role. Parents should also set an example themselves and ensure a balanced nutrition in their daily diet. At the same time, they should often change the way the children eat. This can also increase children's interest in food.