As a parent, promoting healthy and nutritious eating habits can sometimes be challenging with young children. However, these developmental years are crucial for building healthy eating habits that set children up for success later in life by encouraging balanced eating while also influencing their cognitive growth. Here are a few strategies for supporting healthy eating habits with your little one:
Be A Positive Role Model
Children often replicate what they see, even when it comes to daily habits and routines like choosing what to eat! As a parent or caregiver, modeling healthy, balanced eating habits helps to encourage children to follow suit. If they see you enjoying nutritious foods and moderating your intake of unhealthier options, they are much more likely to do the same.
Involve Children in Food Decisions
Enforcing healthy eating is often challenging for parents, but children can sometimes be more receptive when they’re offered choices and independence regarding what they want to eat. Having numerous healthy snack options or deciding together which healthy recipes to make for dinner gives them some control over their eating habits while still encouraging nutritious choices. Likewise, allowing children to be involved in food preparation, like cooking dinner or packing a lunch together, can spark an interest in healthy eating.
Balance Healthy Eating with Balanced Treats
It’s unrealistic to think that your child will eat 100% nutritious and healthy food all of the time. In fact, balancing nourishing food with occasional treats encourages children to make good food choices a majority of the time while allowing themselves completely normal indulgences on occasion. This helps to create life-long habits that are good for children without promoting restrictive or disordered eating.
Structure Meal and Snack Times
Children need regular meals and snacks to maintain their energy and focus throughout the day, and creating these structured times for eating can help to minimize the risk of over or under eating between meals. Having healthy and filling snacks on-hand can help moderate eating habits in younger children, while still providing proper nutrition to function throughout the day.
Building healthy eating habits early in life can be an important foundation for cultivating long-lasting wellness. Modeling a positive relationship with food while empowering children to make nutritious eating choices themselves can help your child to grow up making consistently balanced meal choices throughout the rest of their lives.