Share these tips with your kids, grandkids or any kid.
Remember to keep it FUN!
- Get them excited about healthy food: Let them smell, touch, taste, ask questions and try fruits, veggies, yogurts and other healthy foods in the kitchen. Ask them what they think of the foods and let them know their opinions count.
- Get them involved in the kitchen: Let them help you with small, kid-safe jobs in the kitchen such as mixing ingredients. Be sure to thank them for their help.
- Give them a say in what they eat: Help your kids make the right food and drink choices from an early age. If they have a say in decisions, they will be more excited about what they eat. It's a great way to get them to take charge of their health.
- Take them grocery shopping with you: Get your kids involved in shopping decisions. It may take a little more time in the supermarket, but it is likely to lead to less tantrums at meals.
- Keep the junk food out of the house: Your kids can't eat unhealthy snacks if you don't buy them. Kids will moan at first, but soon they will get hungry and reach for the apple instead of the chips.
- Add healthy food when you can: Find ways to add healthy foods into foods your child already likes. You can put blueberries in pancakes, chopped fruit on cereal or small pieces of broccoli in macaroni and cheese.
- Help them learn: Encourage your kids to draw or doodle pictures of healthy foods or write a poem. Post it on the fridge and make sure they know you are proud.
- Sit down together: Try to set aside your meals as family time. Turn off the TV and enjoy eating together.
- Keep healthy snacks on hand: Bring healthy snacks when you pick them up from school, after sports practice and at other times when you know their stomachs will be grumbling.
- Make healthy food and meals fun: Try cutting up food into fun shapes or making faces out of fruit and vegetables. Putting healthy snacks such as oatmeal cookies or dried fruit into a fun bag can turn healthy foods into a cool snack for your child.
Resource: http://www.healthiergeneration.org/parents.aspx?id=1850&terms=picky
