What your child eats now can affect their health for years to come.

Many adults ignore healthy eating campaigns and constantly feed their children sugar, chocolate, lollies and fatty foods because they are afraid of emotional retaliation and sudden outbursts if they don’t give in.

Allowing your children to dictate what they eat will adversely impact their health.

The following tips for healthy snacking will help get your family on track to a better and healthier future:

1. Be a role model

Like other aspects of parenting, being a role model will affect how and what they eat.

If you eat fatty foods and sugar, your child will want to as well. Throw out food that you think could make your child unhealthy. If you must indulge yourself once in awhile, keep these snacks well hidden and only eat them when your children are not around.

2. Make eating a game

Children love to play games, and creating an eating game can get them to eat anything.

These games should often have prizes at the end that encourages your children to eat vegetables and fruits. Mix snacks such as trail mix are also good sources of fiber and should be given to children along with the fruit and vegetables.

Some of the basic games can include the “clean plate club” or “hide and seek”.

The “clean plate club” is a fictional club that children join if they eat all of their food. Once their done, you inform them that they are now a part of this “club” for the remainder of the night. Give them a small prize and then start the game again the following night.

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3. Enforce snacking rules

If you want your children to eat healthy, you must enforce basic healthy snacking rules throughout your home:

• Hide any snacks that you don’t want your children to see.
• Constantly remind your children about snack time, and help them prepare healthy snacks throughout the day.
• Each snack prepared should have the same type and amount of nutrients. Try to make the larger meals only slightly larger than the snacks you give them.

4. Use peer pressure to help your cause

Instead of only one person that is eating healthy, have your neighbours and their child join your children when eating these snacks. The peer pressure each child will feel when eating healthy will help them forget about fatty foods and sugar for the day.

5. Reward good eating habits

Informing them why should children eat healthy will help them to better understand why they must eat the food that they do, and once they begin to eat healthy snacks in between meals on a daily basis, you can reward them with a small lolly a few times a week and show them how to take care of their teeth.

When trying to get your children to eat healthy snacks, the most important thing to remember is respect. If you respect your children, they will respect you and follow your instructions without hesitation.

This healthy eating process will likely take a few months to get started, but you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labour once you implement the rules in your home.

Do you try to establish good eating habits in your kids? Please share any tips you have in the comments below.

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