Comments on: Should Kids Play with their Food? http://www.drgreene.com/perspectives/should-kids-play-with-their-food/ Putting the care into children's health Thu, 26 Sep 2013 15:47:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Alan Greene http://www.drgreene.com/perspectives/should-kids-play-with-their-food/#comment-417 Alan Greene Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:31:00 +0000 http://www.drgreene.com/?post_type=guestpost&p=45067#comment-417 Beautiful! That combination of giving everything a taste, but not forcing foods is great. It gives kids a change to learn to love foods. And I love that celebratory, fun approach to good food.

]]> By: Beth Shupp-George http://www.drgreene.com/perspectives/should-kids-play-with-their-food/#comment-414 Beth Shupp-George Fri, 16 Aug 2013 18:47:00 +0000 http://www.drgreene.com/?post_type=guestpost&p=45067#comment-414 We did baby-led solids, which meant that my daughter was finger-feeding herself solids starting at 6 months old. As you can imagine, this involved a good deal more “playing” (and wearing) than eating in the beginning, which was fine with us.

She’s now almost five, and still enjoys playing with food, although now it’s more about making the foods and utensils talk to each other, and to her.

We never make her eat anything she doesn’t want, and encourage her to stop when she’s full, but we also encourage her to give everything a taste, and often have to redirect her attention to her food when she gets distracted.

The best way we’ve found to do that is for the food to “talk” to her and ask to go to “the party in her tummy.” The sillier the better, as far as she’s concerned. She particularly likes it when her pineapple dances the hula, or the fork challenges her to try to catch the food it’s holding.

Works for us.

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