5 Ways to Get Your Baby to Eat
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Since our daughter started eating solids, it?s been a new kind of challenge to get her to eat. Now, in addition to tempting her taste buds with bottles and sippy cups, we have to try to entice her with foods even we might turn our noses up at ? sweet potatoes and chicken, apples and ham, and odd-sounding fruit and vegetable combinations.
In addition, she has certain days when even her favorite foods seem to suddenly fall out of favor and she will refuse them. Unfortunately, it never seems to work in reverse ? her least favorites remain her least favorites.
Here are some of the ways we?ve discovered that (sometimes) get our daughter to finish a jar of food ? or at least eat a few more bites.
- Pretend it?s delicious. If we pretend to eat her food from the spoon, or even eat a little bit ourselves, it sometimes will make her more willing to eat another bite or two.
- Do the airplane. Or the train, or the screeching car. Sometimes sound effects will get her to smile, and smiling = an open mouth.
- Get creative. The airplane doesn?t work? Try tickling your baby?s feet, tapping his or her leg ? anything to divert his or her attention from not wanting to eat. My husband came up with a bizarre but effective method that usually gets our daughter to eat. He takes one of her legs and cranks it up like he?s jacking up a car, complete with an ?ch-ch, ch-ch? sound. Sometimes one leg works, sometimes both legs at the same time ? but so far it?s been surprisingly effective.
- Get devious. Set two jars side by side ? the offensive food, and a favorite (in our case, pears). Spoon a few jars of the good food into your baby?s mouth, then a spoonful of the offending food. It might only work for a few tries, but I?ve found that it can work.
- Put it on your plate. Whether we?re eating spaghetti and meatballs or sausage and sauerkraut, once our daughter started eating solid food, her interest in table foods has increased considerably. As such, whenever she sees us eating something, she must immediately have it. Even foods she won?t normally enjoy she will eat off of our plates – like sauerkraut. Try giving your child a bite or two of a food from your plate that your baby turns his or her nose up at ? and see if they?ll eat it from your plate.
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melissa H says...
Here is another effective way of getting a food that she doesn’t like in…. spoon up the offensive food and then dip it into one that she really likes. We started doing this because the one spoon yummy one spoon yucky stopped working when she started sticking her tongue out to taste the food before opening up. : ) What a stinker
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