Four Tips to Develop Healthy Eating Habits in Your Children

Children’s dislike for healthy nutritious food is a common concern among parents. They will hate vegetables, and milk and find healthy food boring. If you are a parent who is faced with the same behavior, this article is for you. 

It explains everything from what you can do to develop healthy eating habits to how parental monitoring apps help in this regard. It involves your efforts and care. So, if you are ready, here are the four things that will help you improve your kids’ eating behaviors. 

Tell Them Stories or Sing Poems

This might look like an old approach, but believe me, it works. Children always love to imagine characters and listen to interesting stories. Don’t be a boring parent. Be creative and take their interest toward something better. It will give multiple benefits. 

First, it is making them eat the food, taking all of their attention toward the story instead of the food. Second, stories increase their imagination power and creativity. Third, even if they start depending upon stories more, it is going to do no harm. Instead, it will make them more creative.  

Poems can also be a replacement. Learn children-friendly interesting poems and sing this to them. Poems and songs serve the same purpose as stories do. In short, the principle is simple and the same, divert their attention towards something more interesting (of course that has no harm like a cell phone) and make them eat nutritious food that they want to. Poems also improve language and learning skills. So, it is a win-win.  

Involve Them in Healthy Manual Activities 

When your kids just run away after looking at the food that is boring for them, don’t make them look at it much. Playing manual games with them or making them busy with that will help a lot. We are not talking about sports of course. 

Cardboard games, puzzles, colors matching games, etc. are the best replacement for phones and are amazing to take children’s attention as well. Lego blocks will be the best, however. These games are made to improve kids’ intellect, imagination, and creativity. So, they must also be a part of their activities even when the concern is not making them eat.

Make Interesting Food & Make Eating a Fun Activity

You are definitely not going to put spoons in their mouths every time. But to make them eat by themselves, you will have to put in some effort. 

Be an interesting parent and make food look fun. You can get a different idea online. Making faces over dishes, adding colors, etc. are some of these. Also, make eating a form of activity that the child likes. Reward them when they are successfully taking spoons to their mouths, and playing some music.

Take Away Their Phones

The worst thing we do is place smartphones in the hands of our children while they are eating. Yes, for that particular moment, it helps. Their mobile phone gets all of their attention and you make them eat vegetables, fruits, or any of the healthy meals you want. Well, it can prove to be really dangerous.

Have you ever heard about the principle of association in psychology? Here it is. When you associate something that a child likes with eating, it becomes a need. Now, every time a child would eat something, they would need a cell phone. This in later life will cause binge eating habits (which often occur due to usage of the phone while eating) and also lead to excessive and compulsive usage of the phone that is not recommended in any case.   

However, when you find your child not leaving their devices, parental monitoring apps like FamilyTime can help. For example, an interesting way to do it is by putting eating time schedules or locks. When it is time for lunch, the phone will get locked saying it is lunchtime. This will make a kid learn this behavior that a phone is not supposed to work when you are eating. Likewise, you can put locks for different meal times or even for other activities. There are many other features that you can check on their website.