Download

Eating problems

Baby health

Eating problems

It’s normal for young children to refuse food. In fact, almost every child goes through a period of rejecting new foods. Fortunately, eventually most children grow out of this phase.

Does my child eat enough?
Don’t worry about what children eat in a given day, but rather be concerned about what they eat over the course of a week. Because if children are well, active and gaining weight, then they probably also get enough food as well.

Try a balanced diet
Whatever your child likes or doesn’t, try to make sure your child eats some food from the 4 main food groups:

  1. Fruits and vegetables
  2. Carbohydrates: rice, bread, noodles, pasta and other starchy carbs 
  3. Dairy or dairy alternatives
  4. Proteins: beans, fish, eggs

How to introduce new food
Introduce new foods gradually. As you do that you can keep going back to the foods your child didn’t like before. Children’s tastes change. One day they’ll hate something, but a month later they may love it.

Keep offering a variety of foods – it may take lots of attempts before your child accepts some foods.

Tips for parents of fussy eaters

Avoid salt and sugar
Whatever you give to your child, try to avoid salt and sugar as they are both harmful. Salty favorites of children include pizza, potato chips and ramen noodles. Sweet favorites are chocolate, lollipops, dessert and even normal food which often contains lots of sugar. To ensure your child is growing up healthy, try to avoid both. Especially since its difficult to stop them once they get used to them.

Three simple rules:

When to speak to a specialist?
Call or visit a doctor if your child shows any of the following:

DownloadMali Daily Pregnancy Tracker

Daily Pregnancy & Parenting Tracker

Mali has 4.9 Stars from 10,000+ ratings

4.9 Stars from 10,000+ ratings