Many times we think that babies are “picky eaters” may just be a very subjective feeling. If we can carefully observe what exactly the baby is picky about, it may help us better manage the baby's diet.

Some mothers believe that their nearly one-year-old baby often eats mushy food and tries lumpy food but doesn’t like it. The mother labels her baby’s behavior as a “picky eater.”

In my opinion, this cannot be considered picky eating, but the baby is not adaptable to the characteristics.

The acceptance of traits is not a skill that comes naturally at some point in time, but is a step-by-step process that requires daily practice and accumulation.

Babies aged 6-7 months quickly accept different traits. Maybe in just one month, the baby can progress from mushy food to small pieces of food, and some babies can accept lump food as soon as they start to add complementary foods.

On the contrary, babies around 1 year old are not able to adapt so quickly, and they need more time to accept changes in traits.

For example, it may take time for the baby to accept such lumpy food~ If the child is not trained to receive food with different properties at the beginning of the introduction of complementary foods, the child's window period will be missed. After the age of 18, you need to spend more time making up for it.

The so-called window period means that doing this at this stage will achieve twice the result with half the effort. Missing the window does not mean that something cannot be done, but it may take more time and more patience.

For the transition of traits, we can slowly guide and try, and insist on giving foods with different traits. At the same time, the transition of traits should not be rushed, but should be done step by step. Children around one year old may need more than a dozen attempts before they can slowly adapt and accept it.

The child does not like to eat pumpkin, fish and soft rice. In the eyes of the mother, this is also a picky eating behavior.

But while you can see that children have foods they don’t like to eat, you can also see that children like to eat small cakes, dumplings and wontons.

Why are children always the picky eaters? Will adults be picky eaters?

In fact, when we adults purchase food, we have naturally filtered out the foods we don’t like to eat, and the rest are naturally the foods we like to eat.

Adults are not picky eaters just because they have the right to choose in advance. The same goes for babies, who can have their own preferences in food.

We don’t need to force a person to eat food he doesn’t like. We should pay more attention to whether a balanced diet can be achieved under the existing dietary pattern.

For staple foods, there are many alternatives. Cakes, dumplings and wontons that babies like are all staple foods.

If your baby doesn't like fish, you can see if there are other cooking methods or try different fish.

You can have steamed sea bass, braised crucian carp, scrambled whitebait eggs, pan-fried salmon...

You can also use shrimp, crab, shellfish and other seafood as a supplement to the fish;

Or mix fish into your baby's favorite dumplings and wontons...

From a nutritional perspective, no food is completely irreplaceable. As long as the child has a preference, he can do whatever he likes. Choose a format acceptable to your baby and provide as many changes as possible. The ultimate goal is to achieve a balanced diet.

The mother said that the food that the child used to like to eat no longer likes to eat. This is a very common thing around the age of one. At this time, most children begin to learn to stand and walk, which also means that they have more autonomy.

The ability of a child who can already walk to explore the world is certainly far greater than that of a child who has just started to crawl. The world he can explore is larger and he has greater control over his body, so the child's self-awareness is very obvious at this stage.

He seems to have his own opinions and suddenly changes his mind. Unlike when I was a child, when I could just coax and accept it, I even showed strong resistance.

What we parents can do is to insist on giving different foods every day regardless of whether the children accept it or not. Food and the baby become familiar with each other every day, and maybe one day the baby will suddenly "enlighten" and be willing to accept it.

When adding complementary foods, we focus on adaptive feeding: parents are responsible for preparing nutritious and balanced foods, allowing the children to decide whether to eat and how much to eat.

Within this broad framework, we can also limit a range. Foods that you particularly like can be slightly controlled and should not exceed the recommended range of dietary guidelines; foods that you don’t like should appear every day and look familiar to you.

When it comes to food arrangements, don’t just give one choice. You can provide 2-3 kinds of food in the same category (for example, vegetables can be baby cabbage, broccoli, and cucumber), so that the baby can have a choice.

When we give our children more permissions, we are also teaching them to be responsible for their own meals. After all, eating is your baby’s own business. Except that patients lying in bed can be forced to eat through tube feeding, it is basically impossible to force most adults to eat food they do not want to eat.

Babies around 1 year old can eat a lot of food.

We focus on food pairings.

Each meal is guaranteed to include staple foods, animal foods, and certain vegetables and fruits.

For babies over 1 year old, it is hoped that each meal should have half of the staple food, 1/4 of meat, poultry, fish and eggs, and 1/4 of vegetables.

As for what to eat, you can choose and match it for your children based on the dishes at home. We hope that babies after 1 year old can integrate into the family as soon as possible and eat at the same table with parents as soon as possible~

Eating complementary foods is a gradual transition process for babies to adult diet. Babies need to learn many new skills and Continue to practice this skill while adding complementary foods every day.

When it comes to eating, parents can be observers, guides and facilitators. Ultimately, we need to let the baby learn to eat on his own.