This, perhaps, is the greatest grief in the life of my grandmother and mother. The family gathered at the table, and the smallest and most important member of it refuses to eat or eats very little. Let's see why your child does not eat well, and whether this is really so.
What can I do to make the child eat more?
Often the answer lies on the surface, and there is simply no reason to worry, try to change the feeding process to begin with:
- the child badly eats when your persuasion or even threats cause negative emotions; very few people want to eat when they shout at you and forcibly put a spoon in their mouths;
- try to make an important purchase with a crumb: let him choose his own dish and a cup in the store - most likely, it will change his mood while eating;
- think up rituals before eating (wash hands together, give a choice of a bib);
- if the child does not eat vegetables, try to play with him in rabbits or other animals, tell a story or show a cartoon, kids usually happily copy all the cartoons; most importantly, do not put pressure on the child, try different cooking options: do not want to eat carrots - grate it with an apple and add honey, discarded boiled potatoes - make the deruny;
- if a child does not eat a lot of porridge, try to find out what he does not like, maybe adding bananas or berries will fix the situation.
- It also happens that buckwheat with meat sauce will taste more than with milk. Try to cook the porridge with the baby, let him help you in this difficult matter, so he will have more interest in trying what happened (because the crumb cooked it himself!);
- pay attention to the portion in his plate: often the grandmother puts the same portions of the daddy and the baby, and then wonders why the child so badly eats - he just put the daily rate of food.
Why did the child become ill?
As you can see, a little common sense and imagination on the part of the parents may well eliminate the problem of poor appetite, but sometimes the child does not eat well for quite objective reasons. Let's look at the reasons why a child does not eat well:
- Disease . Any disease is not only a lot of negative emotions, during the illness the child moves little, accordingly, the activity of the digestive glands decreases. When a child does not eat well after the illness, there is absolutely no need to worry, offer light and low-fat food, refuse to take heavy meals and ask what the crumb would like to eat.
- Teeth are cut. The first teeth appear in children under 2.5 years of age, this is almost always accompanied by pain and bad health, it is not surprising that the child during this period is capricious and badly eats.
- Often a child does not eat well in the summer. This is perfectly normal, because the body spends a lot of energy on adaptation to heat, and excessive consumption of food simply overloads it. At this time, it is better to switch to light soups and fruits with vegetables instead of roast and baked. As a rule, in the summer, a child does not eat well in the afternoon, and by evening, the appetite may return.
Often, the fears of the mother that the child is very poorly eating, groundless, consult a pediatrician, if the ratio of height and weight of the child is normal, you should not worry. There are several tricks that will help mom persuade a child who has become poorly eating. First stop pouring large portions, this frightens the crumbs. Before meals, run outdoors, it will arouse appetite. Try to plant a child who is very poorly eating, with other children, the company most likely he will eat more than usual. And the main thing: do not feed the child violently, the day or the second hunger strike will not bring such a health damage as neuroses from force-feeding.