What to Expect When Your Toddler Starts Eating

Once your baby reaches the one month stage he or she is no longer an infant. The first three years of life are a period of incredible growth in all areas of a baby's development.

Be sure too to read this chapter no matter how old your child is…a lot of wisdom here applies to children and also adults, especially in the nutrition sections.

From one year to two years old the child will learn how to feed him or herself many different foods. You might also see the toddler begin to use utensils such as a fork or a spoon. The toddler will be using actions and words to communicate thoughts and feeling. He or she may be showing you want he or she wants to eat, what he or she finds delicious and what he or she does not want to eat.

You might find the child is more willing to try new foods and be more willing to depend on herself instead of you.

The toddler is also going to start becoming quite messy. They love to play with their food and paint everything with it, including the tray, the big and you. Many toddlers will throw food and plates for fun and also drop food on the floor.

From two years to three years old the toddler might start choosing which foods to eat. He or she might use words to express thoughts and feelings.

This is the age at which your toddler will learn how to tell you he or she is full. This is very important in the long term for the health of your child. Knowing when to stop eating stops your toddler from growing up to be and overweight child.

Pay attention when your toddler makes a fuss about eating a certain food. It could be that the food is too strong in taste, too hot or even that your toddler is having a mild allergic reaction to it.

A happy toddler is not screaming, crying and protesting while eating. He or she may play with the food but usually they see meal time as a positive, even creative experience.

Understanding that your toddler needs to play with food helps they develop in a healthy way later in life.

From one to three years old, your toddler's palate will expand and so will your menu.
• Offer 3-4 healthy choices during mealtimes
• Offer 2-3 healthy snacks a day.
• Stop making separate meals for the toddler and integrate what the whole family is eating into the toddler diet
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One of the most important things you can do for a toddler is to eat at the same time every day. This helps them get used to the idea of meal-time

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How to Get Your Toddler to Eat Healthy Foods

If you can get your toddler to look forward to meals and sit still and eat then that is half the battle towards establishing healthy eating patterns in the child for the future. Most toddlers are very messy and distractible so this is always a big challenge. Be sure to invest in a good bib, a high chair that is easy to clean and a floor mat. It is also advisable not to wear your best clothes while feeding toddlers. They have been known to throw things!

Toddlers should also not be forced to eat. This makes them think that eating is all about control. Instead be gentle, friendly and offer the toddler food. Let him or her make the decision about what is going to go in the mouth.

It is okay to encourage your baby to play with his or her food. You can cut the food up so that it is attractive and looks like sticks, trees or other fun shapes. You can even get little plastic cookie cutters for making shapes out of soft foods. Making little landscapes or faces out of foods by arranging them in certain ways on the plate is also appealing to them.

You should also not use food as a bargaining chip to get dessert or play time. Food should never be used as a punishment or a road. This can lead to eating too much or disorders like bulimia and anorexia later in life.

Never shame your child at mealtimes. You never want your baby to associate meal time with stress. This could make the baby avoid eating. He or she could end up being overweight or have emotional issues around food.

Be sure to keep your mealtimes twenty minutes or shorter. Do not try to keep a toddler who will not stay in a chair there. They simply will have an ego struggle with you. They do not have the attention span to learn real discipline at this age.

You should also resign yourself to the fact that a toddler's appetite will simply not be the same very day. They also do things like binge on one food, like bananas, for days on end and then refuse to eat anything. Do not worry. Your toddler is probably not going to be malnourished unless it goes on for weeks on end. It is normal for them to be temperamental eaters.

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