Start them out Right!

Breast milk is all a baby needs for the first nine months, unless it is a specially hungry baby who may want to start at six months. When you first start solids, start them with raw foods. Mash a banana, or an avocado, peel a very soft pear and let them suck it to the core, or make raw apple-sauce by blending peeled and cored apples. It’s a lot healthier than store-bought baby food that has been cooked and shelved for who knows how long. After they have tackled fresh fruit, steam and mash veggies for them.

When they are ready for finger foods, put little mounds of grated veggies on their high chair tray and let them go to town. Cube soft melon in season. Bake tofu fingers (see recipe). Make home made hot cereal – grind millet, oats, quinoa, brown rice etc. in blender and cook with water until soft. Forget the packet white rice infant cereal – it will only constipate your little one.

Be Enthusiastic!

Always be positive. Be excited about the foods you are preparing for your children. Teach them the names of the produce, and tell them what it will do for them. My three-year-old likes to sit on the counter as I prepare the food. I get him to say the names of the vegetables I am cutting up, and I tell him about them with an enthusiastic tone. Now I hear him running around telling his little friends, “I ike abacado. It gween and God made it for me cause it good, and it make me swong and have musckles.”

Always return a negative remark with a positive. When my son tells me he doesn’t like apple (or some other food) I say, “Yes you do, of course you do. God made it for us.  I love it and daddy loves it.” I then go on serving it to him as if he never said it.

I know there are things that some people truly don’t like and I would never force something upon a child that would literally make them vomit. But, when our children are young, we train their taste buds. If we don’t train them, who will? Their peers? TV advertising? 

God is with us and he will help us do it! He will give us the strength, ideas, and motivation. Let’s raise strong and healthy children who can be used by God, unhindered by common ills. Let’s teach our children to enjoy food the way God made it for them.   Let’s raise thankful, happy eaters.

Serene’s Healthy Snacks for Children:

Creamy Popsicles

2 packages of silken firm tofu

1 12oz can of 100 percent juice concentrate

Handful of fresh fruit, e.g. strawberries

Blend in blender and pour into Popsicle molds

(You could use apple concentrate with strawberries, or pineapple concentrate with banana, etc.)