We continue with the Infant Feeding Special that we are carrying out in Babies and more with one of those summary entries that try to be a small guide with the most common recommendations for our children to eat in a healthy and balanced way, or at least try to make them do it.
The reason for this is that the feeding of children is something that parents are often very concerned about, perhaps because our parents were also very concerned about their day.
Certainly, food is an important issue because after all we are what we eat (more or less), so that for our children to be healthy and for them not to be lacking they have to eat in a balanced way.
It does not always happen, because it is really very difficult to make a perfect diet and more with children, that many have very marked preferences, as well as important manias too, but at least, if it does not happen, it is not because We as parents have not offered them a correct diet.
AdvertisingLet them eat everything
One of the ideal situations when it comes to food is Let the children eat everything. When we go to the pediatrician always ask: Do you eat everything? And the question is important because it is great that a child has a very varied diet.
The advisable thing then, as parents, is that we offer a variety of shapes, colors and flavors, so that they try everything and eat everything. Then, obviously, the preferences of our children come in, as we have said, because there are children who eat that they like, although they have never tried a food, and there are others who have to try them several times to accept them. Finally, of course, there are others who directly do not accept some foods either at the first or the twentieth.
By this I mean that the ideal is to eat everything, but that it is an ideal that many parents do not fulfill, because we do not eat everything. The important thing is not to fall into the error of not offering our children what we do not like, because in addition to being limited by their tastes (and dislikes) we will be limiting them with ours.
Let them eat the amount they need
Another of the usual recommendations is the one that says that children have to eat the amount they need. The most curious thing is that there are even guides for children to eat more, or to eat what mothers want them to eat, when each mother has different expectations that also differ with the real needs of each child.
We have talked a lot about this, so I recommend that you throw a little “newspaper library”, to know that children have to eat, plain and simple, what their bodies ask them, ignoring their hunger, which knows more than us how much food they need.
Many mothers insist that their children do not eat anything ("eat everything, but very little," many say) and yet they are very good, healthy, happy and active and all this seems to give clues that they actually eat as much as they need.
Have a positive attitude towards food
Carlos González explained it perfectly in the TEDx talk we talked about in Babies and more a few months ago. He said something like that, if we wanted to, we could eat in a totally balanced way by shakes and chemical preparations, such as formulas adapted for babies or preparations such as Pediasure or Meritene.
With a little research and adding everything our body needs, we could prepare shakes and receive exactly what our body needs throughout the day.
The problem is that we would miss one of the great pleasures of life: food. Eating is giving food to our body, but it is also celebrating something (a birthday drinking milkshakes would be a pain), is enjoying flavors, smells and textures, it is the pleasure of cooking something for others and see how they suck their fingers, it is ...
So, since we don't want to forget this pleasure, since we don't want to lose it, we continue to eat food at the risk of a less balanced diet. The best thing is that, more or less, we can continue to live with minor dietary violations.
So, since we put aside nutritional perfection for the pleasure of eating, the logical thing is that children have a positive attitude towards food and not that they end up hating food and eating time because we have forced them to eat.
The most serious case that I have been able to see is the one we could see in "Diario de" a few years ago, where there was a nursery that forced children to eat until they vomited, giving them after eating what they vomited. Let's say that until everything did not enter they did not stop.
The contrast is simply that of put a variety of food on the table and let them try and catch, like the experiment that Clara M. Davis did more than 70 years ago, when she let the children do the diet they wanted, with healthy foods, and they all made a balanced diet. Put food on the table without saying how important it is for them to eat this or that thing, without saying that “if you do not eat this you will not grow” or without using prizes or punishments in the style of “until you finish you do not go out to play”, "If you finish this I give you dessert" or similar things.
Put vegetables, without camouflaging it, because if not they will never know that they are eating vegetables and when they go to the greengrocer with mom or dad they won't know what they are buying, put them meat, fish and actually put them on everything, whether they like it or not.
There are many children who spend weeks, months and years without trying a food and then suddenly start eating it, but to do this they do not have to think that "something bad has", which is what they usually think when we insist a lot (" if they insist on something it will be ”).
For example, one of my children has always been very reluctant to eat vegetables and we have never forced him to eat it. When he has wanted, he has eaten and when he has not, well he did not (he almost never ate, certainly). For a few weeks, eat beans, potatoes and several nights salad. The strongest thing is that he asks ("I want lettuce").
It is not that this has to happen with all the children, but it seems logical that before the food there are no negative aspects that can end up spoiling rather than solving, so It is always advisable to offer food, even if they don't like it. To cover our backs it is better to do something to eat that you know will succeed. To give an example, first of all what we believe you will hardly eat and secondly what we know that, if you reject the former, you will eat more than likely.
I know you will think that they will always eat the second and never the first, but I say, more than once my children have finished eating the first still knowing that then comes the second.
In any case, we are many adults who eat better now that we are free to decide that in our childhood when we were forced. Now we eat well because we want to be well, then we had to eat to avoid punishment or get prizes ... that motivation was effective for a while, but then disappeared. The desire to be healthy or feel good is a much more lasting motivation over time and, more importantly, comes from within, from ourselves.
In a few days we talked a little more about the recommendations for healthy eating, entering into more concrete things.
Photos | Timsamoff, A4gpa, Traaf on Flickr (CC) On Babies and more | Special Infant Feeding
