Your baby is now growing pretty rapidly, and you wonder what sort of food to give him.
You know that you have to give him only healthy and nutritious food, and you also know that it is a wiser idea to start him off on new foods one at a time, when he is still very young and has not become picky and choosy yet.
However, you do not know exactly what sort of foods to give your toddler, so that the food is both healthy for him and friendly too.
Do not worry; here are some tips for you as a concerned parent who wants only the best for your child:
- Your toddler needs dairy foods, fruits and vegetables, meats, and grains in whatever forms you may prefer to give them to him.
- You could make your toddler’s food easy to hold and easy and tasty to nibble on, especially because he needs to eat more frequently than adults or older children. He needs the nutrition and the energy that good foods will give him. You could make this finger food: instead of serving him sandwiches, cut off the crusts and make them into small bite sized pieces, which he can hold and eat himself, without your help. How’s that for a change?
- Make sure that you do not give your toddler foods that he cannot chew; these may become a real choking hazard. If you are offering him fruits or vegetables, cut them into small pieces that he can enjoy holding and nibbling on. Use carrots, cucumber, apples, pears, pineapples, or bananas. Try dry fruits as well, like raisins, prunes, apricots. However, remember; you have to supervise your toddler when he is nibbling at these foods, because he may inadvertently choke on the bits.
Your toddler loves to experiment at this age, and he is always on the go, touching, feeling, smelling and tasting a wide variety of things. This is the time that you have to provide him with a large variety of tastes and feels and smells in food, so that his curiosity is satisfied to some extent.
If plain fruits and vegetables do not keep him happy, you could offer him a variety of dips, like yoghurt, cheese and so on. He will not only enjoy dipping his foods in the dips and making a huge mess out of it, but he will also love the different tastes.
If you are in a hurry to make homemade dips, you could try ketchup; this is an excellent standby for your toddler, who will love its texture and color and consistency, and the healthy foods that you have taken the trouble to prepare for him will vanish in a jiffy!
