My Top 5 Tips on How to Encourage Your Toddler to Eat More

Having had a baby that didn't drink much milk, (she still wouldn't take more than 4oz at a time even at 5 Months old) I was told that she would most likely thrive on food and cut her bottles quicker than I expected. Of course Emme has always loved proving everybody wrong and although initially she loved the early stages of weaning, enjoying every new flavour we introduced, she would never eat much and disliked moving onto each new stage, instead favouring milk, which before one is perfectly fine, food before one is supposedly only for fun anyway. However it has still took us some encouraging to get Emme to eat more than a few spoonfuls before telling us 'no' because she's had enough. So encouraging Emme to eat seems to have become a new hobby of mine and I wanted to share my top 5 tips on how to encourage your toddler to eat more with those of you who have a fussy toddler too - 

1.Eat at the table with them - this probably sounds simple to some, I've been brought up to sit at the table when eating meals but Dan's family are the opposite and only eat at the table for Christmas dinner and we very quickly got into a habit of eating on the sofa and/or floor when moving into our own house. Since buying a new kitchen table, we have been eating every meal sat together and I find that watching us eat encourages Emme to eat more too.

2.Involve them in cooking - I've found that Emme seems to be encouraged by food when I involve her in the cooking, obviously shes too young to really be involved but simply doing things like letting her stir ingredients gets her more excited about her food.

3.Cook hearty home cooked meals - Emme gets much more excited about the home cooked flavoursome meals that I cook such as cottage pie, spaghetti bolognaise and chilli's, she will quite happily eat a bowl full of my homemade chilli and rice in the evenings but when I make her snacky bits for lunch such as ham, cucumber, cheese etc she merely picks at it and is very quickly done.

4.Mix it up - I often get stuck in a rut of giving Emme sandwiches for lunch but understandably she gets bored quickly so I have to remember to mix it up sometimes, even if its just doing something as simple as tuna pasta for lunch, it's still quick and easy but because I don't make it often, she seems to enjoy it more.

5.Cut down on the snacks - After a little research, I have found that two snacks a day is plenty for a toddler, we find that one in between each meal works well. Once Emme started walking, she just didn't have time for food, she was far too excited to explore that sitting in a highchair became a problem for a little while and she ended up snacking far too much! For me I was just trying to make sure she was actually eating something but it very quickly became a bad habit that we had to break. Since cutting her snacks down, I have found that she will eat more at meal times so it does seem to be working.

Do you have a fussy toddler? What are your top tips for encouraging your toddler to eat more?

Love Abbie x

Instagram - Facebook - Pinterest - Twitter - Bloglovin