Food & Eating Habits: 3 to 5 Year Olds

Food & Eating: 3 to 5 Year Olds

Food & eating 3 to 5 year olds.A Child is the happiest if he/she has eaten well.

Your child should be eating the same food as you during the preschool years.

At Intelligentsia, we urge the parent to offer foods with nutritional value in a calm environment and to have regular times for eating.

Your child’s job is to decide whether he or she is hungry and how much food to eat when it’s offered.

Some Tips that we at Intelligentsia have for the Parents:

• When children eat a variety of foods, they get a balance of the vitamins they need to grow.

Healthy options include fresh vegetables and fruits, dairy products and whole-grain cereals and bread.

The parents should therefore, offer a mix of all of this to a Child.

• A child may not eat everything that is served.

It is therefore upto the parents to serve appropriate portion sizes.

Even better, let your children choose their own portion sizes.

At this age, they should learn to know when they are full. Some children are picky eaters.

Parents can encourage their children to try new foods, but they should not pressurise them to eat.

• Offer regular meal times and sit together.

Serve foods at regular intervals.

Children who are eating throughout the day may not be hungry at the normal meal time, when healthier foods tend to be available.

The parents must sit together and eat with the child at the table. This helps create a calm environment for eating.

• Another parent role is to limit sugary drinks and processed food in the house.

Fast foods and Sugary drinks can lead to cavities and unhealthy weight gain.

• The best drinks for children are water and milk.

It is known that Milk provides calcium and vitamin D to build strong bones.

Milk product are good sometimes, but it should not be offered all the time.

Whole fruit is preferable to fruit juice—even if it is 100% juice—as juice is a concentrated source of sugar and low in fibre and some quantities of juice could be served with a meal.

• Television can be a big challenge to your child’s good nutrition.

The pre-schoolers are easily influenced by ads for unhealthy foods like sugary cereals, fast food, and sweets.

The best way to avoid this is by switching off the TV at mealtime and bedtime.

• At this age, your child should be ready to learn basic table manners.

A child cannot grip the fork or spoon in his or her fist.

With the help of parents, he or she can begin learning the proper use of a table cutlery.

You can also teach other table manners, such as not talking with a full mouth, using a napkin, and not reaching across another person’s plate.

A child will always watch to see how the rest of the family is behaving and follow them, specially the siblings.

It’s easier to develop table manners if you have a family custom of eating together.

The child should set the table or help in some other way in preparing the meal.