Eating habits

We like to feed ourselves using our fingers at 12 months;

We start to use a spoon or fork to feed ourselves or feed you at 15-18months.

We like to explore new foods on our own.

But we often need at least 10 exposures to a new food before we adopt it.

You decide what kinds of healthy foods to offer, and how to guide us to eat;

We decides which of those foods to eat, and how much to eat.

Please learn the skills of how to attract our attention to foods;

Please learn the skills of how to make eating fun.

Please provide tons of different smells, flavors and textures in foods for us to try.

Colorful foods like green lettuce, red carrots, and yellow bananas attract our eyes.

Cut foods into big and small circles, squares, and triangles to make eating fun.

We will gradually adopt new foods and build our food preferences in our toddle years.

Small but frequent feedings work best for us,

Three meals and snacks between are good for us.

Don't let us play with toys during mealtimes;

Don’t read books during our mealtimes.

Please help us concentrate on eating by turning off the TV during mealtimes.

Please don’t chase us around for hours to feed us.

Eating routines are very important for us;

Rules of eating need to be followed all the time.

We are busy playing and can be distracted easily.

As a matter of fact, it’s a commonly expressed concern to pediatricians at 15-month-old well child visits, that the child has not being eating for months!!

Your observation is partly true because, she has become a picky eater. And it’s not unusual that she will barely take two bites before pushing her food away or turn away when offered food to eat.

It’s all perfectly normal at this age!

Varied and Balanced Foods

When our teeth are growing,

We start to bite, chew, and grind solid foods.

We are growing fast in our toddler year.

So good nutrition and a balanced diet help us grow up healthy.

Please shop and stock up on healthy foods.

Please set regular family meals for you and us.

Please serve us three healthy meals with healthy snacks.

Please let us take variety of healthy and balanced foods daily.

Please serve fruit or vegetables at every meal.

Please serve lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, and beans.

Please serve brown whole-grain breads, pasta, and cereals instead of white ones.

Please serve low-fat milk and dairy products after we turn 2.

Please limit fatty food and avoid deep -fried foods.

Please limit juice to one-half cup per day of 100% fruit juice.

Please limit other sugary drinks and serve water and milk instead.

Please limit fast-food and serve family made healthy and balanced foods.

Tips

Healthy meals: whole grains, vegetables, fruits, lean meats, dairy, fish, and beans.

Healthy snacks: slices or piece of fruits and vegetables, yogurt, cheese, or whole-grain crackers.

Daily fluid requirement: about 1,500 ml (50oz) including milk, soups, water, and juice。

Build Up a Healthy Life Style

Why is it so important to build up a healthy life style for toddlers? During first three years of our life, Our brains grow and develop fast. We see, hear, run, reach, smell, and taste. And we use all of our senses to explore this world. We have curious and absorbent minds. And want to explore, look, smell, and taste what we can get. We are more independence. And we imitate others’ eating behavior and build up our own. We are building up our mind to accept or deny. We show a wide range of emotions about what we like or dislike for foods and activities. We are learning how to handle our feeling. And we also test parents’ responses to our actions. The toddlers’ years are critical wonder years. It is the time to build up the habits for eating, sleeping, learning, social activities and behavior. The toddlers’ years are critical molding years. Please help us to build up healthy life style.

How can you help us to build up a healthy life?

Set up regular family meals

• Have three meals with 2-3 healthy snacks a day
• Don’t miss breakfast
• Eat healthy yourself and with us

Build up healthy eating habits

• Have meals on table, turn off TV
• Don’t let us play with toys during mealtimes
• Don’t chase us around for feeding

Serve variety of healthy foods daily

• Balanced foods for meals and make snacks healthy
• Provide different colors, smells, flavors and textures in foods for us
• Serve the food we less like first and the food we most like last
• Give less fatty foods, and sugary foods if our families have history of diabetes, cardiac-vascular diseases

Keep us active

• Play with us indoor and outdoor and let us build up the skills of walking, running, jumping, kicking, throwing, and catching.
• Let us engage in active play as basketball, baseball, soccer, and others
• No watching TV when we are younger than age 2, and limit TV time to 1 hour per day when we reach 2 years old

If you miss our toddler years, it will be hard to change our habits later on!

Poor Eaters (Underweight)

Mom: Oh, my dear tiny one. There are tons of good foods. You even don’t look, smell, or taste them. Could you just eat little pieces? Son: No, I don’t want to. We triple our birthweight at 11 to 12months old. We gain weight slowly after age 1. We need about 1,000 to 1,300 calories daily now. We grow 5-6 pounds a year after age 1. We are a group of small kids, active, busy, and happy. Most of us don’t have any disease. If we are energetic, active, happy, and growing well, Please don’t worry about us. We need less food now!

Some of us are

· Born small and will be on small size for life because we get our gene from you.

• Have higher metabolic level and need more foods than others.

· Are too busy and don’t want to sit down to eat.

· Don’t pay attention to foods in mealtime, watching TV, listening stories, or playing toys.

· Are picky eater

• Eat too much snacks or sugary foods and drink too much milk or juice
• Hold and drink from bottle for milk or juice frequently, even right before meals
• Have underlying medical problems and need to be checked by doctors

Underweight

Despite doing everything as correctly as humanly possible, your child won’t gain weight, or she might even be falling off of her established growth pattern.

Your pediatrician may be able to recommend a higher calorie milk supplement and/or some creative ways to increase the calorie content of the food you are already giving her.

Sometimes however, low weight can be a complicated issue with an underlying medical diagnosis. This has to be addressed before your little pumpkin can get back to gaining weight.

Her pediatrician will discuss with you how to proceed.

The good news is that most children that are under weight has no medical problem, they are just burning more calories than they are consuming and with some creativity, this can and will be resolved along with the help of her pediatrician.

Tips for Underweight Management

Dear parents and grandparents, please

• Set regular eating schedule for us, three meals and 2-3 healthy snacks daily
• Set family mealtime and let us all focus for foods, turning off TV and taking away toys and books
• Limit our milk intake 16 to 24 ounces and juice 4 ounces a day. Too much milk and juice will negatively affect our appetite for solid foods
• Limit sugary or junk foods, no snack within 1.5 to 2 hours before meal time
• Encourage us to drink by cup. Make sure we finish drinking milk or juice within 15 minutes. Don’t let us hold bottle or sippy-cup and play around.
• Serve us variety of foods, balanced foods, colorful foods, and foods with different shape and texture
• Know calories of foods and provide us nutrient-dense foods which can help us to get calories
• Let us help to prepare foods and join decision making for our food selection
• Let us eat foods we don’t quite like first, then have ones we like.

If you try all the tricks above and none works, you can move to “Hungry Therapy” or “Provide small portion and add little therapy”.

“Hungry Therapy”

• Let us know what you expect for eating.
• Let us know clearly there are only 30 to 45minutes for eating. If we don’t eat well without reasons, the foods served will be taken away and we have to wait to next mealtime. There are no juices, milk, or other heavy foods until next mealtime, except water or small pieces of healthy snack as veggies or fruits.
• In the beginning, we may fuss or refuse to eat anything. But we gradually learn that there is no bargain; we have to eat in the family mealtime to avoid hungry sensation.

“Provide small portion and add little therapy”

• Please respect our tiny tummies and eating habits.
• Provide small food servings for different kinds of foods.
• When we finished, and then add a little more.
• When we stop eating, you may encourage us to take one, two, and three bites without force-feeding.
• Or you can feed us one, two, and three spoons of foods without force-feeding.
• This will get us to taste a new food, or add more calories.
• This will open our stomach and increase our appetite gradually.

Picky Eaters

Mom: Oh, my dear. Mom has cooked lots of foods for you. Could you eat a little vegetables or fruits? Child: I want candy, chocolate milk, or juice. I don’t like veggies, apples, or bananas. Mom: Could you take little pieces? Child: No. Please know and respect our mind! We have our own mind on just about everything. We start to have strong feeling what we like and dislike. We are stubborn and any alternative is unacceptable. We want to be more independent and to master our daily life for eating, sleeping, and playing. But we won't starve and we know hungry feeling!

This is a passing stage for us, toddlers.

Please don't interpret us as being stubborn.

Please don’t build up mealtime hassles with us.

Please try to understand us, communicate with us.

Please better to learn how to select and make foods our way!

We establish food preferences during our toddler years.

Please help us develop a taste for nutritious foods.

Please provide variety of healthy foods for us.

Let us decide whether to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat

We may surprise you one day by eating all of them!

Most of us are picky eaters.

We are naturally slow to accept new foods.

Keep reintroduce the new one and serve a small portion.

Keep encourage us to try one bite without forcing.

If we don’t try this time, we may take next time!

Keep the mealtime mood upbeat.

Keep the mealtime less distractive.

Keep the mealtime fun.

Avoid power struggle, threatening a punishment

We will eat when we are hungry!

Management for Picky Eaters

Please know and respect our eating habit.

Our growth is slowing after age one. So our appetite decreases.

We walk and run and always on the go.

We can’t sit still over 5 to 10 minutes for anything.

We have erratic eating habits as we have mood swings.

We may eat a lot one day, then little on the next day.

We may eat green veggies now, refuse them then. .

We may want pizza for breakfast or muffin in dinner.

We may skip a meal, and then eat like tiger in the next meal.

So, aim for a nutritionally-balanced week, not a day.

Healthy Eating

Set family meals and be a model for healthy eating. We watch and follow your eating. Please eat three meals a day and a variety of healthy foods with us.

Keep the routine for meals. Serve three meals at about the same times every day and add 2-3 healthy snacks between.

Decrease distractions. Take off books or toys from the table and turn off the television during meals

Watch the clock. Don’t serve juice or snacks 1.5-2 hours before meals. Let us come to table hungry.

Limit milk and juice. 16 to 24 oz milk and 4 oz 100% fruit juice are good for us daily. Give us too much milk or juice will decrease our appetite for solid foods.

Don't give dessert regularly. Set dessert 1-2 nights a week and provide healthy desserts.

Try not to keep junk food in the house as candy, chips, and other low-nutrient cookies or sweets.

Let us feed self. We need time to learn how to handle foods well.

Don’t award with food, don’t punish with food, and don’t bagging with food.

Don’t building or reinforcing the power struggle for eating.

Provide variety of healthy foods to find our favorite ones.

Do healthy food shopping. Buy the variety of healthy foods for us.

Do healthy food cooking. Prepare food healthy

Use imagination to serve the food creatively.

Please give us opportunity to prepare, choose and eat healthy foods

Encourage us to help. We like to eat our creations.

Shop for foods at the grocery stores with us. We can make some selection for your shopping list.

Prepare and cook the foods with you. We can help to rinse, tear, scrub, stir, and squeeze the foods

Set the table and plate with you. Encourage us to choose.

Make it fun. Offer or let us make together an attractive tray with colorful, different texture, taste, shapes of foods.

Eat it fun. Let’s cut foods to different shape and designs with cookie cutters and talk about foods’ color and shape, or give name for special foods.

Let us dip or top foods and make delightfully mess.

Let us do pretend play for eating with our dolls and little figures, and with you.

Management for Picky Eaters

Tips to introduce new foods to us

Mix foods to add color, texture, and taste. Add chopped broccoli, carrots, green peppers, tomato, or zucchini into spaghetti sauce, casseroles, and soups.

Dip foods to add calories, taste, and make it fun. Common dips are cottage cheese, cream cheese, peanut butter, guacamole, tomato sauce, pureed fruits or vegetables, or yogurt, which can serve well as spreads on veggie or fruit slices, rice cakes, and toast.

Top foods to add calories, taste, and make it fun. Spread topping onto crackers, toast, rice cake, or fruit slices. The common toppings are cottage cheese, cream cheese, peanut butter, guacamole, tomato sauce, fruit concentrate, or yogurt.

Make smoothie to enhance calories or introduce new foods. You can mix milk, fresh fruits, juice, yogurt, and peanut butter. Don’t forget to serve other solid foods to us. We have to chew, not only swallow.

Serve the new food and un-favorite foods 1^st and the favorite foods last

Offer small portions for different healthy foods. Cut sandwiches, pancakes, waffles, pizza, fruits, and vegetables into small various shapes. Let us taste different foods.

Encourage us to bite one, two, and three more pieces without force-feeding when we stop to eat.

Provide easy-to-reach healthy snacks. When we run around the house, we can stop, sit down, and nibble a bit.

Let other kids set the example. Invite over friends about same age known to be a good eater or take us to the party with other kids. We can share meals together and catch on each other.

Be patient to introduce new foods. Our eating habit will not change overnight. It may take 8 to10 times for us to accept a new food after it’s first introduced to us.

Tips to let us eat veggies and fruits

We need three servings of veggies and fruits a day.

We need one cup of veggies and one cup of fruits daily.

Please serve the veggies and fruits salad 1^st on our meal time.

Please leave colorful veggie and fruits array on small table, so we can take one when pass by.

Let us grow plants in garden with you.

Let us harvest red tomatoes, green cucumbers, or yellow zucchini with you.

Let us shop veggie and fruits in grocery stores with you.

Let us wash veggie and fruits with you

Let us watch you dice or slice veggies and fruits into our favorite foods.

Let us help to add them to rice, soup, salad, cream cheese, guacamole, pancakes or muffin mix.

Don’t forget finger foods for veggies and fruits.

Don’t forget dip them in a favorite sauce or dip.

Don’t forget to top them with a favorite sauce.

Don’t forget make veggies and fruits fun with us by cut them into interesting shapes and designs using a small cookie cutter; steam different veggies as red carrot, yellow squash, and greens; make a veggie or/and fruits salad colorful.

Set reasonable expectation.

We may not eat veggies and fruits in days.

We will gradually adopt them!

Tips

Seek doctors’ help when we get ill or reaction from foods, or our picky eating habit is compromising our growth and development.

Healthy eating habits built up in our toddler years. If we don’t take veggies or milk during our toddler years, we may not take them for our entire life!

Overweight

1.

Mom: Oh, my dear. Mom cooks lots of foods for you. Please come to take more and eat more. You will be the strongest one in the world. Child: Mom, I am hungry. I want to eat and drink more. But I’m too heavy. I can’t run and catch my friends. .
	Overweight, this is becoming a world wide epidemic, but is most noticeable in the western world and particularly in America. What can you do to set your little munchkin on the right path? Do everything in moderation and do not force feed! Sounds simple, but can sometimes be hard to enforce, when the little one is surrounded by so much food, and she cries to eat some cookies, then a little ice cream, ho she’ just a bay, let her have a slice of pie, and no, it doesn’t matter, if she drinks 48onzes of milk over night so she can sleep well and not disturb every one’s sleep and so on and so fort. Yes, maybe I exaggerated our attitude in dealing with our toddlers a little bit, but, I’m probably (in some cases) not too far from the truth. Remember, you can and you are currently shaping your toddler’s attitude towards food for the rest of her very long life, so, be very careful not to use food neither as a reward nor as a punishment. Feed as necessary and everything in moderation. If however, your child is already overweight, please consult your pediatrician to see if she’s truly overweight, and to plan how to set her back on the right part. Do not try to place the child on a diet, because in so doing, you might inadvertently, be restricting essential building blocks needed for an overall healthy growth. You may also found out it’s a false alarm she is not overweight in the true sense, because her weight is just right for her length, both of which are above average, but perfectly proportional. Simply, no knee jerk reaction, talk to her doctor.

Overweight

Are we overweight?

We grow at different rates at different times.

Our growing rate is slowing down after age 1.

If we looks more chunky than other toddlers,

If we continue growing fast, more than 6 to 7 pound a year,

If you think we are heavier or overweight,

Please take us to our doctor,

They will tell you we are truly overweight or not.

The factors that contribute to becoming overweight

Genetic factors

Lifestyle and habits

Some medications

Some could have endocrine problems or genetic syndromes

The risk of childhood overweight

Overweight children are at risk of developing medical problems as the follows:

• Obesity in adult
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol and abnormal blood lipid levels
• Insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes
• Bone and joint problems
• Restless or disordered sleep patterns
• Snoring overnight
• Irregular menstrual cycles (overweight girls)
• Polycystic ovarian syndrome (overweight girls)
• Liver and gall bladder disease
• Depression or substance abuse.
• Low self-esteem that stems from being teased, or rejected by peers.
• Unhealthy dieting habits and eating disorders

Overweight Management

Management 101

Build healthy eating and physical activity habits for entire family.

Have healthier meals.

Decrease portion sizes, in the home and out.

Cut down on TV, computer, and video game time.

More active life and more exercise.

Healthy eating habits

If you want to change our eating and activity habits,

Please let whole family do it with us.

Set family mealtime and eat with us.

Be a model and eat healthy with us

Please provide regular three meals and add 2-3 healthy snacks between.

Don’t let us miss breakfast!

Don’t let us hold bottles or cups for juice or milk when we play around.

Try not to use food as a reward,

And try not to use food as a punishment.

Healthy foods

Please vary veggies and give us fresh fruits instead of juice.

Limit dressing and tops.

Provide juice not over 4 oz daily.

Please give us whole grains as brown rice, whole wheat instead of white ones.

Please keep meats lean for us

Please give us whole milk and other dairy products before we turn 2.

Change milk or milk products to low fat when we turn to 2.

16 to 24 ounces milk and other dairy products daily are good for us.

Try not introducing soft drinks to us in our toddler years.

Limit chips, cookies, and candy.

Offer us healthy snacks as vegetables, fruits, yogurt, cheese, and whole-grain crackers.

Don’t take us to fast food restaurant frequently.

Choose salads or small sandwiches and less fried foods there.

Please boil, steam, bake, broil, grill, or roast instead of frying.

Please add less oil, butter, or dressing, avoid fat sauces or gravies when you cook.

Limit fatty foods in our diet.

Increase activities

Our favorite activities are free playing.

Please go with us playing indoor and outdoor.

Please limit our time in front of the TV, computer, or handheld video-game.

Please let us build healthy lifestyles with you.

Prevent obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease at the beginning of life....

Dear parents and grandparents

We are born in families with histories of being too heavy (overweight), having high sugar levels (diabetes), or having heart and vessel problems etc.

We don’t want to be too heavy when we grow up.
The extra fat can clog our vessels, heart, and brain.
So we can get high blood pressure when we grow up.
Our heart vessels will be clogged, and they will scream from pain “ouch!”
Our brain vessels will be clogged, and we will have floppy bodies, “ouch!”

We don’t want our sugar levels to be too high when we grow up.
The extra sugar can hurt our eyes, kidneys, toes, and legs etc.
So our eyes will lose their shine, and we will be blind.
Our kidneys will lose their function, and we have to live on a machine to get rid of our waste.
Our toes and legs will die and turn black, and doctors will have to cut them off, “ouch!”

We don’t want to be too heavy and have too much sugar.
We don’t want the extra fat and sugar clogging the vessels of our hearts, brains, eyes, kidneys, toes, and legs.
We don’t want to have too many tests and take too many medications when we are growing up.

We want to be healthy and enjoy our entire life.
We want to be happy and be satisfied our entire life.
Please don’t let us eat too much,
Please don’t let us eat too many snacks,
Please don’t give us too many candies,
Please don’t buy us too many sweet drinks,
Please don’t let us watch too much TV and eat too much junk food.

Please introduce healthy foods, low fat, low sugar, and high fiber foods to us,
Please help us eat less rice and bread,
Please cook foods that are healthy for us,
Please help us build up healthy eating habits,
Please play actively with us indoors and outdoors,
Let us all build and maintain healthy and active life styles.

Toddler years are the critical modeling years for us.

Toddler years are the years to build up habits and life style for us.

Please don’t miss our toddler years!