Juicy tomatoes, fresh green beans, cool cucumbers, crisp green peppers, delicious mangoes and succulent summer squash are just a few of the fresh vegetables available to enjoy during summer. But what do you do if your child doesn't enjoy vegetables?
Here are few tips to make children eat vegetables:
- Choose and prepare a wide variety of vegetables in different ways.
- As colorful, attractive, delicious salads, as french fries, as a cooked dish, in any preferred way the child demands.
- Serve vegetables, whenever possible, as "finger foods". Even cooked vegetables can be eaten this way.
- Cook vegetables just until they are tender, not mushy. Overcooked vegetables lose their bright and attractive color.
- Serve vegetables often, in the sense, include vegetables in at least 2 meals per day. Children may taste a vegetable many times before they enjoy it.
- Serve small portions. For example, put just one or two tablespoons of food on your child's plate.
- If the child likes' the taste, he/she will ask for a second helping. This way your child will not feel overwhelmed, and you will not waste lot of food.
- Plan meals and snacks as your child has an appetite when at the table. Toddlers and preschoolers need regular meal and snack times spaced tow or three hours apart.
- Let your child help choose and prepare vegetables.
- Offer positive encouragement for trying new foods.
In addition, keep in mind that parents and children have different responsibilities in the feeding relationship. Parents are responsible for providing meals and snacks, offering a variety of foods, setting a good example, and recognizing that children grow and develop at their own rates and that appetites vary. Children are responsible for deciding how much to eat, which foods to eat and whether they are hungry.
Have a great summer!!!
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