How to Get Your Kids to Like Healthy Food
Time and money management becomes a whole different story once you start a family. Having children makes it impossible to sustain unhealthy lifestyles (junk food, mess in the kitchen and elsewhere, staying out late, sleeping in, etc.) that usually accompany being single/not having kids.
Even women who were previously pretty organized find it hard to follow some sort of schedule and keep things in order with these new additions to their lives.
One of the things that every mom should try and experiment with is having kids participate in the kitchen. If you wonder what they could possibly do there, there’s a whole list of activities. They can:
- Wash and sort vegetables and fruits
- Batter eggs
- Mix ingredients with a mixer
- Cut veggies (if they are not too young)
- Wash and dry dishes
- Clean the utensils
- Etc.
Your children can basically help you with anything you’re doing in the kitchen, but you need to remember two important things:
- They shouldn’t perform anything dangerous (no sharp objects, or anything that might hurt them)
- They have to ENJOY what they are doing
In order to interest your children in working with you in the kitchen you need to make everything a game or a competition. Put your creativity to the test. Here are some ideas how this could work:
1) Your kids can compete in who’ll wash dishes better (without any spots left! ;) , who’ll make batter faster or who’ll eat more carrots while washing them. You might want to give them some added incentive in form of an award for the quickest/cleanest, etc.
You have to be careful about that, too. You don’t want an older/quicker child to keep getting all the awards, so look out for their skills and devise the competition is such a way that they take turns winning.
Who says parenting isn’t complicated?!
2) If cooking competitions are not much fun for your kids, you can invent a fairytale to follow what you are doing. The kitchen is a pirate ship, you are pirates cooking dinner for the Chief Pirate (the dad).
Or, you are cave people who just got back from the hunt. You hunted down a delicious meat and gathered some juicy veggies. Ideas for stories are countless.
Spending time in the kitchen with kids is a good way to teach them about healthy nutrition. If they are involved in the process of preparing veggies, they are more likely to eat them.
Also, this way you won’t feel like you need to rush through cooking, with a guilty feeling of not spending quality time with children.
