How to Get a 7-Year-Old to Eat Healthy

Letting your child participate in growing a family fruit and vegetable garden is a great way to encourage healthy eating.

Healthy foods give a child's body the nutrients needed to build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and organs, but getting a child to eat healthy is commonly a source of frustration for parents. Often the approach a parent uses to encourage healthy eating backfires and reinforces the child's dislike of healthy foods. Encouraging healthy eating should not be approached by a food rewards system or with punishment. Punishing a child for not eating healthy foods enforces the child's dislike of the food. The best way to encourage healthy eating habits in children is to lead by example, make eating fun and allow the child to play an interactive role in their diet.

Instructions

1. Lead by example. Children watch their parents and look to their parents for guidance. It is hard to successfully encourage your child to eat healthy when you are eating junk food.

2. Teach children about healthy foods through fun and interactive games. The USDA has a free online computer game called "MyPyramid Blast Off" that teaches children about healthy eating through an interactive space travel adventure (link in the Resources section below).

3. Grow a family fruit and vegetable garden at home. Let your child help plant the seeds and tend the garden. Encourage your child to have a sense of pride in the family garden. When serving food from the garden at the dinner table, try saying, "Look at this delicious food that we have grown."

4. Bring your child shopping at the grocery store to help pick out food. Have fun looking around the store investigating the colors, shapes and sizes of produce, nuts and grains.

5. Let your child help you make meals. Make meal preparation a fun time where your child can not only learn how to cook but can use creativity to design fun meal presentations. For example, vegetables can be stacked in the shape of an animal or brown rice can be piled up to look like a mountain.

6. Talk to your child about the taste of different foods. If your child thinks that a food tastes bad, talk about ways to make the food taste better. Create fun concoctions in the kitchen with your child, adding ingredients to make the foods taste good. Treat this time as a fun playtime science experiment. This type of playtime encourages your child to explore the flavors of different foods in a fun and interactive way.

Tips & Warnings

• Instead of using food to reward good behavior, reward good behavior with fun activities. Instead of punishing your child for failing to eat healthy foods, bring your child to the kitchen to explore other healthy but tasty options.

Resources

• Psychological Influences on the Childhood Diet by Leann L. Birch
• MyPyramid Blast Off Game