Toddler Meal Ideas

Creating toddler meal ideas, which encourage a toddler to actually sit down and eat, is one of the many issues mothers have when raising active and picky toddlers. Since two and three year olds also love to feed themselves, meals should be made of small pieces of food that a toddler can pick up and safely eat.




Chopped bites of dry food tend not to stay on a spoon when toddlers are involved in manipulating the spoon by themselves. So, if your toddler likes to use a spoon, chopped pieces of food can be mixed with fruit-flavored yogurt so the food will remain on the spoon.

Reasons why most toddlers are picky eaters concern developmental causes. After almost tripling their size during the first year of life, toddlers experience a slowdown in growth between one and three years of age. Because they are not growing as quickly, they simply don't need the amount of food they once required.

In addition, toddlers are extremely curious and restless little people, with brains that demand to be constantly stimulated. Sitting down and eating is the last thing on their minds, which is why toddler meal ideas should be oriented around snacks rather than whole, sit-down dinners. Those will come later when your toddler has become a ravenous adolescent experiencing another astonishing growth spurt.

Mothers, you should understand that the eating habits of toddlers are not something they understand and control. They just know that when they are hungry, they can eat just enough to eliminate that hungry feeling and be on their busy way again without interrupting their exploration of the world too much.

Food and the Toddler

It is common for toddlers to binge on one kind of food or almost no food for several days at a time. He may only want meat one day, fruit the next and practically nothing but juice to drink the next. Normal toddlers generally require about 1300 calories per day, but probably don't get that. Therefore, you should "plot" for a nutritional five or six days as a whole, rather than trying to get your toddler to eat a balanced diet every day.

Nibble, Nibble, Nibble

Toddler meal ideals should be based on one concept--nutritious snacks that are offered throughout the day rather than three big meals. Like a cow or sheep roaming a field and grazing at will, toddlers also prefer to live this way and feel frustrated when they are not allowed to indulge in this behavior. They also get bored quickly because of that information-absorbing brain and need variety to keep their attention. With this in mind, here are some food ideas, which may entice your toddler to pick up a piece of food and pop it in his mouth (with a little encouragement from you)

• thinly sliced apple pieces (shaped like moons) surrounded by thinly sliced carrots (shaped like planets)
• pieces of avocado (they look like boats) on a bed of blue jello cubes
• broccoli pieces or "trees"
• banana slices (drizzle a little chocolate on them so they look like wheels)
• cheese cubes (stack them on top of one another and eat them quickly before they fall)
• celery with peanut butter (have the toddler pretend to be a builder who fills the "cracks" of the celery with peanut butter

After offering the snacks, leave the tray where your child can easily reach for a bite when he wants one. Also, if you have older children in the household, ask them to come up with inventive toddler meal ideas. They may even want to help in preparing the snacks.

Blood sugar is another factor in toddler behavior. When a toddler goes a long time without eating (around two or more hours) his behavior becomes unpredictable and more "toddler-like". This is because their blood sugar level has become unstable and is lower than it should be.

Allowing your toddler to graze during most of the day to keep that metabolism busy burning food, and his behavior may remain more stable and less moody. Just by understanding how your toddler's mind and body works, makes toddler meal ideas much easier to create--or not create.

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