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Make eating fun – and healthy for your kids!

from True Love
Image: Baba & Kleuter

Sister Lilian, childcare advisor, midwife and author of Sister Lilian's Pregnancy and Birth Companion and Sister Lilian's Babycare Companion, says as a parent you have to set a healthy eating example for your child. "Keep meals simple and wholesome. Make sure you play regular physical games with your child too – this works for children as well as adults," she says.

Sister Lilian offers tips on how to encourage your small child to eat if he or she has a picky appetite:

Encourage safe DIY cooking – if a toddler has "helped" to stir the pot, peel the fruit, or cut the veggies, it is amazing how much more keen they are to eat the end product.

Cocktail and kebab meals – toddlers often seem more keen to eat cubed veggies and fruit when on a stick; for small appetites use cocktail sticks and progress to kebab sticks as your toddler grows or as the appetite improves.

Make a food picture – faces, houses, trains, tractors, cars and animals, innovatively shaped out of healthy foods is quite popular.

Breakfast does not have to be early in the day. Little ones are often only hungry from 9am or 10am.

One can even be unconventional and serve soup for breakfast!

Many toddlers eat better and more when taking finger foods, rather than being fed. Finger foods can be anything they can manage to hold.

Firm (but not totally hard, such as raw carrot) pieces of food are often chewed more easily than softer foods, and most toddlers prefer these.

Giving many other fluids can also affect appetite for solids. Water and rooibos tea are the best choices for extra fluids and will affect appetite less than milk or juice.

The Sister Lilian Careline is a free-to-the-public telephonic advisory service. For pregnancy and childcare advice, call 012 348 4992.