The biggest area I’m passionate about when delivering my weaning classes is how you can develop good eaters and healthy life long eating habits. So here’s some areas for you to consider:
- What does your baby see you eat?
- Do you eat with your baby/toddler?
- Does your baby have a choice over what they eat?
- Can your baby tell what they are eating? Is it in it’s true form – ie does the apple look like a bit of apple?
- Do you experiment often?
- How much flavour to you add?
Family meals are the best way to develop good eating habits. I know often what we seek is that quiet solitary meal once the kids are in bed and maybe eating earlier doesn’t suit you. If you want good eaters though, this is what helps you. It doesn’t mean you need to eat with them every night or at every meal but doing this will develop good eaters.
Most food can be done in a baby-led way and babies are quickly adaptable to using their fingers to pick up rice and smaller items. You can use utensils and mash up things you feel they might not manage and help them put the food onto spoons that they can feed themselves or, even better, put food on toast or bread (brilliant for soup or hummus) that they can manage themselves.
It’s also good to add lots of flavour to food. We need to be mindful of how much salt we add to our babies’ diets but we can use herbs, spices, garlic, onion and all sorts of other flavours. This means they will always like those flavours – our children were weaned on beef or bean chilli and lentils and curried chickpeas – they are still the favourites in our home and are food that we naturally enjoy eating.
If you’re coming up to weaning stage – come along to my weaning classes, book a weaning consultation or else sign up to get updates of when my weaning book is coming out. You will learn how to wean without fuss, when to start, how to make it easy, and how to make life long healthy eaters.
Much love, Tricia xx
