Careful parents try to surround the kid with love and care, they watch over his health, buy only qualitative clothes, regularly visit the pediatrician, do inoculations and, of course, want the kid well to eat. But in certain cases the child badly eats, and mom cannot understand that not so.
Small appetite at the child – a problem of many parents. Everyone solves it in own way: some force to eat, keeping saying "for mom, for dad", and sometimes and threatening, and others address various experts, assuming that the kid is sick.
However often there are situations that the child is healthy, but badly eats. In the beginning parents need to define whether there is a problem. If the kid, well gains weight, but eats a little as it seems to adults, then it is not necessary to lift panic. But if there is a shortage of body weight, problems with food need to be solved.
Reasons of small appetite
By nutritionists and psychologists it is established that more often the appetite worsens at kids aged from 2 up to 4 years. At this time there comes age crisis, the child thus shows the independence, sometimes he just is capricious.
There are also other reasons of small appetite:
- Tasteless food or too large portions. Often offer the child a bowl of soup or porridges which will be mastered hardly by the adult. It seems to parents that the kid ate too little.
- Frequent having a snack between the main meals. For example, before a lunch or a dinner the parents allow to eat chocolate, cookies, candy. It satisfies feeling of hunger and worsens appetite.
- Non-compliance with a diet. The organism cannot adapt to meals if every day a breakfast, the lunch and a dinner pass at different times.
- Disease period. Even cold considerably reduces appetite, the kid tries to drink more and often refuses any food.
You should not forget also about psychological factors because of which the child badly eats. Problems with tutors in kindergarten, peers, etc. can spoil appetite.
How to improve appetite?
If there are no problems with health, but the child all the same refuses food, it is not necessary to neglect a problem. It is necessary to find out the reason and to start resolute actions.
- To set a day regimen. For this purpose it is possible to make the schedule and to feed the kid in certain time: a breakfast – 8.00, a lunch – 12.30, etc.
- To offer children's portions that the child ate all food, without leaving anything in a plate. Otherwise he will get used what to be malnourished – it is normal.
- To gradually enter new products. It is impossible to offer several new dishes for lunch or a dinner at once, it is important that at a plate there was a food which the kid already tasted.
- Not to feed violently. It will only worsen a situation, the kid will begin to eat less and will become reserved.
- To ask the child to help in kitchen. If he likes to cook dishes, then he will try them with the great pleasure. It is also possible to think out together edible jewelry for porridge, soup, mashed potatoes, etc.
If parents do everything correctly, then by 5-6 years the appetite will improve, the legibility to food will become less. The most important – if the child badly eats, not to force it to eat violently, it will only strengthen disgust for food.