Feeding tips

Choosing your first feeding spoon:

When first introduced to solids, your baby is generally also going through teething, and therefore the gums can be extremely sensitive. Using a hard tip spoon, therefore, may be uncomfortable against his or her gums, so try and find the softest spoon you can.

Babies tend to look around at every noise whilst being fed, which is challenging with any spoon, but choosing soft tip spoon makes it that much easier, so that when your baby moves his head to look at the cat running past,  you won’t catch his mouth with the spoon.

A soft tip spoon will also act as a handy teething tool!

See the Amadeus  6 pack of soft tip spoons if you need a soft tip spoon.

Feeding Tricky Toddlers:

You are not alone if you dread dinnertime in your household. There are thousands of parents out there who even stay at work longer to put the inevitable event off for as long as possible.

This is in addition to the general mayhem of trying to prevent the dog from getting the best bits (he knows just where to sit!), to trying to keep the bowl upright on the table.

All finished off with rejection when your culinary efforts have once again been sneered at by a 2 year old!

Toddlers are meant to be picky eaters, its all in the genes!

1. Developmentally, they need less food in year 2 as their growth slows down
2. Sitting down for a meal requires focused attention that even some adults struggle with
3. They have woken up to the fact that they can make decisions, and have learned the word “no”.

In fact, snacking their way through the day over five small meals is a much better way for a toddler to eat. They have small tummies, and they can't eat a lot of food in one go.

Use creative tactics to get him to eat, and if you have a child that doesn't eat very much, then every bite counts. Eating a bag of chips will affect how much he eats of the good stuff. Secondly, giving in to your child when you would rather he had eaten an apple, gives him the message that he can push you each time. So, he just says “no” to every healthy alternative until he finally gets the 6th slice of bread for the day.

Some ideas:

1. Dipping: Toddlers love to feed themselves finger foods creatively. Put a few different sauces into little colourful containers and a selection of dipping foods (chicken fingers, sausages, roasted butternut, halved tomatoes, eggs etc) and play a dipping game.

2. Drawing pictures: Use a plastic table cloth and allow your toddler to use his yogurt or cottage pie as paint whilst you spoon food into his mouth.

3. Change the environment : If the “feeding” chair produces stress hormones in both of you, then eat somewhere else. Take a toy truck into the garden and get your toddler to drive it to each depot, loading a meatball at each point.

4. Reduce the juice : If you are giving your child juice with his or her meal, then cut it back. In fact, get rid of the sippy, non-spill cups with teats. Not only are they damaging your child's appetite and  preventing you from getting a spoon in at all, but it is also impeding his speech development through the lack of drinking motion required when drinking from an open top cup. Finally, the motion of drinking helps strengthen your child's jaw for chewing. Keep non spill cups when you are out and about.

5 Your child won't starve himself : A large part of the responsibility is your toddler's. If you say “no” to the one thing he wants to eat (like ice-cream) and move on to bath time when he won't eat the yummy dinner you have lovingly prepared. It won't take him long to work out that if he doesn't eat it, he doesn't get fed.

6. Expect the unexpected : Toddlers are erratic, and so are their eating habits. Toddlers need between 1,000 and 1,300 (good) calories a day, but they won't eat this in evenly spread chunks. Aim for a nutritionally-balanced week, not a balanced day.

7. Offer a nibble tray : Put bit-sized portions of colourful food into different coloured and sized containers, such as thinly sliced apple or halved grapes, quarter of an avocado, carrot swords, cheese building blocks, egg canoes etc.

Place the food on an easy-to-reach table so he can snack regularly. When a toddler doesn't eat for long periods, it messes up his sugar levels and makes him grumpy, resulting in bad behaviour.

8. Loading: Putting nutritious, familiar favourites on top of new and less-desirable foods like building blocks as a way to broaden what they will eat.

9. Drink it : Blend a smoothie using and provide it to them in a colourful cup as a drink. They get the nutrients without realizing it.

10 Respect tiny tummies : Keep food servings small. A young child's stomach is the the size of his fist. So dole out small portions at first and refill on request.

11. Child-sized tables: Children are likely to sit and eat longer at a child-size table and chair where their feet touch the ground.

12. Let them cook: Children are more likely to eat their own creations, so, when appropriate, let your child help prepare the food.

The most important thing is to RELAX. Expect food fixations. It's not easy to reason with an opinionated two-year-old. Toddlers have a mindset about the order of things in their world. This is a passing stage.

A healthy and happy attitude towards mealtimes is so important. Take the stress away, and you may be surprised at how easy and fun it all becomes. Just like the Brady family.