Tips and tricks to make meal time a fun time (especially for picky eater)
Hello everyone, been a while since our last posting. Well you know mom’s got only two hands (hey, I’m seriously using my ‘mom’s card’ here..lol).
As you know, meal time could be a real challenge for us moms especially when you have some picky-unreasonable creatures to feed at home. A lot of thinking, planning, sweat and tears involve in terms of homemade/store bought, spicy/non spicy, healthy/not so healthy, and the list of what, where, why, and when just goes on and on and on, every single day.
Furthermore in the era of social media we have now, the pressure to be or at least trying to be ‘The best mom in the world’ is even higher. Put something green and organic on the table, you’ll be labeled ‘The boring-uncool mom’. Put something sweet or deep fried on the other hand you’ll be crowned ‘The unsophisticated-junk loader mom’. Oh not forgetting ‘The lazy mom’ if the food are not homemade from scratch.
You see, all these unnecessary stress to impress others are making it so hard to just have a decent meal and make the kids and even yourself happy. Whereby it’s supposed to be easy, fun and create memorable moments as a family.
Well if you fall in this ‘problematic’ bandwagon fret not, we have some tips and tricks up our sleeves to make your gloomy days a little brighter.
Here’s what you can do:
1. Avoid permanent restrict, be modest.
When you deprive them too hardly from eating the things they love it will soon create the forbidden-fruit syndrome, making kids crave what’s off-limits even more. A little treats sometimes is no harm.
2. Don’t force the course.
Go easy and pull the string gently cause you best bet when we insist too much they’ll resist even more. Keep your persistence check, cause according to a research it takes around 6-15 times for a child to develop a taste for a new food.
3. More color, more love.
Isn’t it too obvious that kids love colors? Use that as your weapon to fish them. Be creative and put some ‘rainbow’ on their plates. Think yellow banana, green broccoli, red apple, purple grapes, orange salmon, white chicken, etc. You can even play a game for them to participate by naming all the food they know in each colors.
4. Let them be the ‘Junior Masterchef’.
Cooking is fun, encourage them to join you in the kitchen. Not only they’ll learn new things and skills, they’ll grow fonder on food and it helps create their awareness of what they’re putting inside their body.
5. Start simple, improvise gradually.
Don’t make things complicated even more than it already is. Try to begin with simpler choice of food. Let them train their tastebuds one at a time and from there you can add more ingredients to level things up.
6. Be the model you wish them to follow.
Kids are more likely to accept a new food if they see their parents, siblings and extended family eating healthy foods and enjoying them too!
7. Patience is virtue.
There’s just no other way to describe this, but be patient, be calm, be composed. You’ll find rainbow after the rain.
Hope these few tips help. Maybe next time we’ll share some delicious recipes for you to try, ya why not!
Till then, bon appétit!
Nurlaila Kamal
#kenitMom
