10 ideas for your child to eat fish
| If lunch or dinner become moments of dispute and we cannot get our children to eat certain foods, such as fish, we must take into account some aspects that can help us.
There are certain foods that tend to be poorly accepted by children and one of them is fish. Either because of the thorns, because of the little flavor of some or the strong flavor of others ... fish is one of the foods that generally costs more to eat normally and without complaints. Do you need some ideas for your child to eat fish?
Try to get them to eat with other children who do like fish, make an attractive and colorful presentation, with different textures and colors to make it more appetizing, or choose types of fish with little bone, since the bones are prickly and difficult to set aside; these are some tips to get it:
Some tips for your children to eat fish
We must respect the initiatives of our son, if he wants to take the food together with another or separately, or the order in which he wants to eat. Respect for these small initiatives can lead to the acceptance of food rejected from the start.
You have to encourage eat everything and do not give up, get the strength to continue trying to accept food through different strategies, however, do not force or force to eat fish.
- Involve you in preparing food. Cooking is generally a task reserved for adults and children do not come into contact with food until the dish is presented to them on the table. Within its possibilities we must allow and encourage to collaborate in the entire previous process: washing, peeling, cooking, presentation. When children are involved in preparing a dish, they value this work more and accept the final result much more, encouraging them to try new things.
- Appetizing presentation. Let's not think that for a child, eating fish has to consist of eating steamed hake; Let's play with all the possibilities we have to give new shapes, colors, textures and flavors to the dish. A attractive and showy presentation it will always help better acceptance.
- Let's avoid thorns. One of the main problems with fish are the bones, because for them it is cumbersome to separate them, prick them… Let's choose types of fish with a low bone (monkfish, hake…) or pieces of fish without a bone (loins or hearts). We can buy frozen fillets without bone, the nutritional quality of frozen fish will be good as long as its freezing and cold storage has been correct.
- Being part of dishes that you like. If there are preparations that are well accepted, we can introduce the fish in these preparations, for example: pasta with salmon pieces, hake and prawn cake, cod fritters or croquettes, squid sandwich, horse mackerel burgers, monkfish in your favorite sauce.
- Present little quantity and when hungry. Sometimes the problem that a new or little accepted food can represent can be aggravated by the fact of offering too much or serving it when the child is little hungry, we must avoid these coincidences.
- Set an example. Children are born imitators, nothing better for them to accept a food than to eat all the same and see how others, parents, siblings, friends ... they all eat fish the same as he or she and with total normality.
- Offer different varieties of fish. There are many varieties of fish and many types of possible preparations, perhaps cod is not well accepted but hake is, perhaps it does not support sardines but mullets, let's play with the variety and little by little we will introduce more.
- Do not lose your calm or good humor. Although food is often a cause for concern and this can lead to tension and nerves, let's try not to lose our nerves and always maintain a smile that will always favor a good result.
- Create favorable environment. Relaxed and open to change. It is difficult for a child who is not a good eater in and of himself to eat well in an environment with rush, tension, bad faces, hustle, inattention or excessive attention ...
(Updated at Apr 14 / 2024)