After birth, the baby develops a series of changes in its physical composition, gains weight and grows. Therefore, it is common that during his first months of life he must feed in large quantities. From the age of one year on, his intake starts to be lower, because his growth after that age is slow and sometimes it happens that my baby doesn’t want to eat.
Many parents think that food intake will be higher in the second year of life, but this is not the case. The child is adapting its organism to a diet similar to that of its parents, for this reason, children will increase their appetite around five or seven years of age as they increase in size.
Also, it is necessary to consider that not all children of the same age are fed in identical portions, some require more food than others, this is determined based on the nutritional requirements of each child.
If the child does not want to eat, the parent must educate him and provide him with foods that are pleasing to his sight, always taking into account the amount of food he needs, according to his nutritional demand. Food should not exceed or decrease the nutritional limits of each person.
Tips for establishing optimal feeding behavior
To encourage healthy eating and in appropriate measures, parents should provide the child with a pleasant environment, the child must understand that feeding is a necessary and voluntary act, without punishment or obligations based on retaliation.
A good strategy is to serve the portion of food needed by the child in the largest plate, in this way, he will believe that you served less food. Also, you could invite him to participate in the cooking tasks, set the table, choose the food he likes the most, help serve his own food and other activities that encourage the child’s autonomy.
If your baby doesn’t want to eat, promote that he/she should be fed together with his/her parents., it is a way to show him how he should behave, what he should eat and the established schedules for each meal. The child’s food should be balanced, they should get used to the flavors of healthy foods, so that in the future they can be added to their diet without problems.
They should eat the amount required for their organism, neither more nor less, taking into account satisfying their hunger and establishing adequate eating habits, without excesses of food so as not to promote obesity and without lack of food so as not to run the risk of nutritional deficit or other related diseases.
Healthy eating
Promoting healthy eating implies not taking punitive measures to make the little one feel frightened or experience every meal as an unpleasant act, this will not help at all, instead, it will make the little one not want to eat.
There will always be other strategies to educate the child to follow a healthy diet, so that each meal is a pleasant experience, encouraging autonomy, creativity and nutritional satisfaction of the child.
