Getting Your Kids to Eat Healthy

A mom wrote that she is struggling to get her kids to eat healthy. What kids eat can easily turn into a power struggle. Ultimately your children control the food they swallow. However, you control the food that is available to them.

Battling over food takes a toll on relationships plus makes meal time unpleasant. It is your job to provide healthy food and to teach your children why their bodies need healthy food. However, it is your children’s job to decide what to eat and how much to eat. This is an essential skill for all children to develop.

These are some ways we've found helped our kids eat healthier:

• Let them help prepare food. As preschoolers they helped with things like slicing strawberries and tearing lettuce.  As they got older, they helped make dinners.
• Make smoothies using fruits and vegetables - delicious and healthy! 
• Plant a garden.  My fussy eating young son would  gladly eat snap peas that he picked himself from the garden!  All the neighborhood kids love the raspberries and blueberries we grow.
• Let your children pick out a special fruit they'd like to have at the grocery store. 
• When your kids are hungry before a meal, put out something like carrots and grapes which they are welcome to snack on before dinner. 
• Let them do their own age-appropriate cooking. 

What has worked well for you in getting your kids to eat healthier?