15 Ways to Make Mealtime Fun
When you have a CDH child, mealtime can often be the most dreaded and frustrating time of the day. We’ve been there; however, with these fun and creative tips and tricks, you can bring laughter back to the kitchen table!
1. Race to Finish Plates: Turn mealtime into a game with the Race to Finish plates. Your child can enjoy eating their meal divided into small compartments in order to earn a special treat at the finish line! Don’t want to buy the cute plate? No worries, you can do the same thing with a muffin tin.
2. Fun Spoons: Utensils come in many different styles these days! Some have their favorite characters, are shaped like dump trucks, and some are even fun shapes. Lots of kids also love using kid-size stainless steel spoons like adults or chopsticks for kids! Playing around with their utensils can make it more exciting.
3. Cute Meals: If you have extra time on your hands, you can arrange their food into fun shapes, add sprinkles to yogurt, or make fun things such as ants on a log. Pinterest can be a great place to find easy (and not so easy) fun toddler meal ideas!
4. Food Picks: Kids love to poke things with food picks! You can buy cute ones with characters to make it even more fun, or keep it easy and use regular toothpicks!
5. Theme Meals: Themed meals can be really fun, especially if you know what they are learning in school. Having a meal with all of a certain color, letter, or subject may encourage them to try things they wouldn’t usually try and eat more than they may normally eat.
6. Fun Plates: Fun people plates can be designed to look like your child and allow you to easily arrange food to create clothing. Seeing food as a fun work of art is often motivating for even the pickiest of eaters. You can also find plates with their favorite characters, colors, and shapes!
7. Cookie Cutters: Cutting food with cookie cutters is a fun and easy way to make sandwiches, veggies, lunch meat, etc., into fun shapes!
8. Eat like a....: As you are eating, you can play a game where you tell your child to “eat like a ___.” Then have them eat like a dog, a hungry man, an old person, or whatever other characters they may adore.
9. Let Them Serve: Place the food in serving bowls on the table and let your child serve themself. You can give parameters that they need to take at least one thing from each category (if you are offering more than one fruit or veggie option) or each bowl, but they can choose how much or how little to pick.
10. Eat-in Different Places: Who says meals always have to be at the table? Mix it up! Let them eat in a fort, in the backyard on a blanket, in their room, or even at the couch with a movie. The special location may encourage extra bites!
11. Serve Small Amounts: Kids can be easily overwhelmed by a lot of food. Instead of serving them the amount you think they can eat, serve less and let them ask for more. They will get excited that they had “3 servings” and possibly end up eating more than you thought they could.
12. Let Them Shop and Cook: Bring the kids into the store and the kitchen whenever you can and allow them to help prepare their food. They will love getting to check off a list, place items in the cart, and help prepare the meals. You can even buy kid size cooking utensils and an apron for them to make it more fun. This will help them feel ownership of the meal and get them more excited to eat.
13. Let Them Play: Who says you can’t play with food? If your child isn’t a fan of something, let them play with it. Having the exposure during a time of non-conflict with no explanation to consume anything may help them become more comfortable with the food!
14. Snack Drawer: Keeping a snack drawer stocked with healthy and easy to grab snacks, both in the pantry and in the refrigerator, can really help! Kids are motivated by all of the colors of fresh fruit, cheese, nuts, etc., and the independence of choosing, and grabbing it themselves and parents love that it is easy to grab.
15. Model Meal Time: From the day your child comes home, make an effort to have family meals. Sit with them and let them see you eating a healthy meal. Have conversations with them and use the time to bond. Even if they aren’t old enough to eat, they will see you and eventually start wanting to eat what you eat.
Check out this list with fun meal items for your CDH child!
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