HEALTHY HABITS KIDS WILL LOVE

Regular meal and snack times help establish a healthy family routine:

• Offer meals and snacks 3 to 4 hours apart at the same time every day
• Limit the duration of meals — about 20 to 30 minutes or 15 if your child is not eating
• Avoid unscheduled snacking between meals
• Provide only water between meals
• Always feed your child in a high chair or at a table
• Encourage your child to eat what the family is eating, even if it's a small amount, rather than cooking a separate meal for him

Pick recipes, grocery-shop, and cook with your kid – he is more likely to eat the food he participated in preparing and you'll have help in the kitchen!

With a toddler:

• Introduce names of ingredients at the grocery store
• Add pre-measured ingredients to recipes
• Hold down buttons on kitchen appliances to help out

With a preschooler:

• Describe tastes and textures and discuss the meal
• Measure and weigh ingredients
• Stir ingredients

Start with small portions and let him ask for more. When introducing new foods, give your kid a choice about which new food he is going to try and make sure to couple it with a favourite.

• Serve age-appropriate foods and portions
• Introduce new foods one at a time
• Teach eating to fullness by serving small portions repeatedly and offering a new helping as soon as the previous one is consumed

Play with foods—serve a sandwich in the shape of a heart or use food to make fun faces or animals on your child's plate.

• Encourage independent feeding and tolerate age-appropriate messiness
• Forget the “Clean Plate Club” and encourage your child to take a bite of everything on his plate. The more often he tries it, the more likely he will be to eat it willingly