How Can I Encourage My Children to Eat Vegetable - Healthy Foods?

Feeding children is a challenging task. It gets more difficult when you try to feed them healthy foods. As parents of our children we want them to grow up physically fit and healthy. That being said, we need patience in trying to feed them healthy foods.

Actually it is the parent or caregivers who can shape the eating habits of children. Role modeling is a good idea when trying to persuade your child to eat healthy foods. The parents should eat healthy foods so that the children will imitate them. Lifestyle has something to do with it too and I believe that when a family eat together and they have a certain kind of lifestyles the children will be influenced and it can be developed into a habit too, like eating junk foods for example.

You can make healthy foods available in your household, when you buy them regularly, plus don’t buy foods which can ruin their eating schedule specifically candies and sweets. Avoid giving carbonated drinks as this contains sugar. Drinking water is good and every parents know this already. Parents and caregivers should be educated too on the proper foods to eat, go, grow and glow foods. That is why it is one of the goal of the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) is to help mothers to be educated as well, because an educated mother will know how to take care of their children. They will know the right food and when to seek proper medication too.

Techniques in making your your child eat healthy foods:

• For liquid, juice and milk, if you want them to drink more liquids more often, enjoin them in drinking milk or juice, or lots of water. Tell them, come here sweetie, we can have a toast and drink with them. Surely the child will be happy and they will drink as they also see you drinking and having fun doing it.
• Vegetables -- Cut the vegetables in a nice shape. Buy a vegetable cutter in which it can make different shapes for vegetables and fruits. A child is always drawn to colorful and things with shapes.

• Enjoin them too when you go to market or store to buy foods. Let them choose what fruits and vegetables they like.

• You can tell a story while they are eating, pretending you are an airplane and then they will open their mouth when you are ready to feed them the healthy foods you prepare.

• Tell them stories about fish and how this kind of food will help them to become strong and healthy. Tell other stories in which a child eat healthily and she/he becomes strong and live longer.

• Let the children eat together in the table with the family. It is nice if one is eating and then the other one will eat the same food too. Children like to have the same activities and like to eat the same food as other children do.

• Put always a vegetable or fruits in the table which they can nibble if they like to eat, like carrots, orange, apple etc. Cut them into small pieces ready to be eaten.

• When you cook other meal, put vegetables into it, make it smaller so that it will be mixed with the main food, and the children think there is no vegetable on it. Just being tricky is all.

Sometimes it is tiring but you need to do it so that they will eat healthy foods.It is for their own good so that they will not become sickly.