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Keep coming back to read how other real parents are feeding their toddlers and putting the advice from Little People's Plates into action.
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When it comes to mealtimes, I think the greatest example you can show your child is to eat together as a family. Felix looks to his older brothers as examples and if he sees them tucking in then he normally follows suit. If they misbehave or even try to leave the table he wants to do the same! As we run a busy Rooms and Restaurant business it isn't always possible to eat as a family but we try... but sometimes parents need to have their own time to eat dinner together, where they can just focus on themselves! ...
I also think if everyone is eating the same thing, even if it is more grown up food like, say, sea bass, if Felix sees everyone having a go he will try it too as he thinks that it's the norm.
The happier the dinner table, and the more relaxed everyone is, normally the more food gets eaten. At Felix's age he quite often would rather play than eat – as I'm sure it is with most toddlers! So if the dinner table is a relaxed happy one, they're more likely to want to stay and eat in that environment. If you're getting frustrated with your children due to eating behaviour or manners as we all can do, this provides a much more stressful environment... no one wants to be there!
Step one from the Ten Steps for Healthy Toddlers is all about eating together and keeping mealtimes relaxed and happy. From my experience this is great advice!
Alexa loved her food as a baby! She would eat pretty much everything. However, once she hit her first birthday she began to show likes and dislikes for different foods and became much pickier in what she would eat. Her tastes actually seem to change from week to week now – she's just recently gone off broccoli which she used to love! ...
Although Alexa still developing her vocabulary she quickly learned to shake her head for 'no' and has started to put her hand out to stop the spoon reaching her mouth if she doesn't want to eat any more. She has also recently started to take her bib off to let us know when she has finished.
You just want to be sure that you're doing your best! To have something like the Ten Steps in front of you gives you that reassurance that you are on the right path.
I really enjoy mealtimes with my daughter Lina, especially now that she has learned to like new things and we can experiment with different foods. She is two now, but sometimes I think back to when I started weaning her, it seemed like a doddle in the first week. She was absolutely fine and I thought, brilliant, this is going to be easy! Then she started to refuse the solid food I gave her. We have come a long way since then, and now, through a little bit of patience and perseverance, she is great. I always try to give her a variety of foods and now she tries most things. It’s only when she’s teething that she’s a bit reluctant. ...
The biggest problem that I had feeding Lina wasn’t introducing new foods but knowing how much I should feed her. There is so much information out there, it’s difficult to know where to turn and what to trust. I just don’t have the time to trawl through all of the sites on the web and the information that I have found is often contradictory. That’s why I was so glad to find the Ten Steps for Healthy Toddlers – its advice from experts but it’s really simple and easy to use. I found the portion size ranges particularly helpful – I had no idea I could give Lina a whole egg! The portion size guide now has a permanent place on my fridge! I think the Ten Steps have helped to reassure me that I was doing the right thing and they have made some things a lot easier!
We’ve worked together as a family to get things right. My husband goes away for work a lot, so whenever he is back, we eat together and have fun at mealtimes to make them a good experience. Having these times together is really important.
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