Parenting as natural as it sounds, poses great many challenges, one in the way of how to develop healthy eating habits, and train your child’s sweet tooth?

As a parent, the transition in the initial stages, seemed like overcoming a Herculean task, with the habitual resistance, persuasion and coaxing, coercion to make my child eat and wean her away from the soft, creamy, chewy desserts, which always won more preference than the healthy foods.
Every eating session would turn out to be a tug-of-war situation pulling my daughter to this end of the spectrum, which shone with health and nutrition but then the resistance from her side was too big, invariably making me gasp for breath.
Now, as a more informed individual about parenting, I am going to share with you some tips what the experts have got to say on how to develop healthy eating habits especially ‘discipline your child’s sweet tooth’.
•    Desserts & More : Nutrition and child experts recommend to start from the concept of redefining desserts, which encompass other health-centric foods and not just ice-creams, pastries or whipped cream ones. A dessert can also mean a nutrition drink that is topped up with strawberries, or crunchy oats crowning a delicious fruit crisp or skimmed milk puddings. This way, your child will slowly get into the groove of appreciating the combo of ‘ health ‘n’ taste desserts, and as a treat for being able to relish the new dessert ‘avatar’, a small dose of a “always-wished-for” dessert item(cereals, marshmallows etc) can be awarded.
•    The forbidden fact : Developing healthy eating habits in your child doesn’t accomplish with overnight weaning or marking a forbidden territory of restricted foods. Remember the more you try to push it across the table the more will be the resistance. So moderation is the rule of the day. Anything in moderation will not cause harm. So level up the sweet-tooth indulgences to a degree of moderation.
•    The sweet tooth training: Here, you establish a ground-rule of making healthy desserts along with the favorite options  to a frequency of not more than 2- 3 times in a week. And every time there is the dessert occasion, make it special and rare, so that your child awaits it with eager anticipation and also enjoys what he/she has received on offer. This way you set the right precedent by creating a space for rarity for desserts, which otherwise might be squashed by regularity or the mundane-ness of the concept. One point to note is that children get infused with a spirit of adventure for the rare occasions, and it is easier to train the sweet-tooth this way.
•    Reasoning : Children are born with their own instincts, so instead of thrusting with sternness, a bit of reasoning leaving not much leeway for argument or space for a build-up of fanciful ideas, could be helpful in making your child understand. That some foods are healthy and more nutritious compared to your child’s favorite foods, which is why you insist on the healthy foods.
•    Don’t impose conditions for finishing dinner: How to develop healthy eating habits and train the sweet tooth without making your child  overeat? Do not insist that your child ‘eats up the plate clean’ for the dessert course. This will only encourage overeating overriding the child’s natural hunger signals.

A few parenting tips summed up with your own instincts can open up many ways resolving on how to develop healthy eating habits in your child and train the sweet tooth, so that you set a blue-print for a healthy life budding with the sweetness of healthy-eating.
Photo Courtesy :  compasscayman.com