Monique le Roux Forslund, author of Healthy Food for a Healthy Baby, gives seven tips for positive meal times.
- Include baby in family meal times, let baby sit with at the table and also taste foods and find out about the world ‘out there’.
- Make sure there is something to occupy your young one with once he or she is sitting at the table. A pork or lamb chop or a large carrot to taste and explore. A busy baby will not get bored.
- It’s good if your little one is not extremely hungry when it’s family time at the table – babies don’t realize the consequence on their behaviour due to hunger. Try to keep family dinner-times happy times. So if needed feed your baby prior to meal time.
- Don’t pressure your baby into eating or tasting – let it come naturally. Babies are curious about the world around them, they will want to explore what lays before them.
- Avoid bribary and negative comments around meal times.
- Allow your baby to use his or her hands – it’s a part of learning not only about tastes out there but also great hand-mouth co-ordination and practice for later when your baby starts to feed him or herself.
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Offer your baby their own spoon to use, and a small snaps glass with just 1 cm of water in the glass, as to learn how to drink out of a glass, they learn this really fast.
More about the author
Now based in Sweden, Monique le Roux Forslund grew up in Cape Town and is a regular visitor to South Africa. She is a licenced health coach, fitness instructor, teacher and mother of three, with well over 20 years’ experience working with children. She has one of Sweden’s most popular health blogs, LifeZone, and is regularly asked for advice, tips, ideas and recipes. She enjoys experimenting with different tastes and flavours and is passionate about cooking.
Books by Monique le Roux Forslund
Healthy Food for a Healthy Baby
As a parent and a teacher, Monique le Roux Forslund has first-hand experience of the effect food has on children. She has seen how sugar and other fast-acting carbohydrates can cause them to become over-active and struggle with concentration.
In Healthy Food for a Healthy Baby she shows you how to give your baby a healthy and nourishing start to life. In addition to more than 100 easy recipes appropriate for babies aged six to 18 months, there are tips about natural good food to ensure that your child maintains all-round good health. Although this is not a 'low carb high fat' recipe book, the recipes do not include wheat flour and sugar.
In addition, there is information on encouraging your child to develop mealtime independence – aka baby-led weaning (BLW) – much sooner than you’d expect.
CLICK HERE to order a copy online.
Low-carb Living for Families
The phrase ‘low carb’ has become the new buzz word, but what exactly does it mean, will it suit your and your family’s lifestyle, and will it be easy to adapt your eating habits to this way of eating? In Low-carb Living for Families, Monique le Roux Forslund answers all these questions and explains why reducing the carbohydrates and simultaneously increasing the consumption of natural, healthy fats is good for you and your family. She also cuts through the jungle of products and information that confront us in the media and on shelves, so that we can find our way to a healthy life of natural foods that will satisfy hunger and banish cravings.
In addition to over 100 delicious and healthy recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, special occasions and snack time for the whole family (including babies!), Low-carb Living for Families provides easy-to-follow, practical tips and inspiration for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
CLICK HERE to order a copy online.