Winning toddler food battles can be really hard for most parents. It’s rare that you find a toddler willingly eating everything parents are dishing out. Just getting them to eat their daily required meals can be such a struggle. If you do want to make the daily resistance a little easier, try going soft on them rather than taking the stern approach.

A good way to start winning your kid over is to make bedtime reading a habitual activity. Choose the books wisely. For instance, instead of reading Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, try reading How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food. The book is a fantastical food story, whereby children are encouraged to try out new foods.

Getting Them to Clean the Plate: Forget That Approach

If you have preschoolers in the house, try reading our books by Ellyn Satter - author of two well-liked books on parent-child feeding relationships. Some of the strategies she suggests are rewarding the child with stickers for eating a certain vegetable, or guessing which chicken finer they will eat next, making shapes out of green beans. You get the point.

"Those parents are working way too hard," Satter says. "The rule of thumb is the harder you work to try to get food into your child, the less likely your child will eat."

Children today snack more often than 30 years ago, and they're guzzling down unhealthy junk.

Vegan or Vegetarian Kids

It’s very important to learn what the basics of nutrition are if your child is on a vegan or vegetarian diet and to know, how certain nutrients can be substituted. Protein that they would get from meats can now be obtained from lentils, soy, dairy and eggs. Experts recommend that parents of vegetarian kids learn nutrition basics to keep their kids healthy.

Satter's idea is this: Our duty as parents is to put nutritious food in front of them. And the kids decide if and how much they want to eat. Don’t make promises of candy or video game time in order to get them to eat it. Perhaps not the first or the second time but maybe by the 20^th or 30^th time they will get around to liking the food. "Even if he only eats bread, even if he eats five slices of bread, and drinks milk," Satter says. "Whatever he wants to eat, he can eat."

"Young children are very, very good at regulating their intake so they are getting the proper amount of calories and fat and carbohydrates and protein for growth — as long as they're offered a healthy range of items," says Andrea Garber, chief nutritionist for the University of California, San Francisco, Child obesity program.

For some parents, it might feel like it would take nothing less than a visit from Santa Claus in order to win toddler food battles.

Image credit – thebabycorner.com