How Should I Give My Baby New Food?

During the first months of life, breast milk provides the baby with all the nutrients he or she needs. As the child reaches the age of about six months, it’s time to start expanding his diet by introducing him to new foods. In this case, you should take the following tips to help you get acquainted with the new flavors and compositions.

Why does a baby reject new foods?

Sooner or later – typically when the child is about six months old – it’s time to start expanding your baby’s food range, which means getting used to new foods through experimentation. However, this process is not always quite simple.

Where some kids love testing new flavors, others don’t like it, and prefer to stay with old familiar foods. In that case, it’s important for parents to maintain their patience and remember that, on average, a baby needs to be allowed to try new food 15 times before he or she starts liking it.

It must also be remembered that this is not just a problem for babies and young children, as neophobia, or fear of new things, is also a problem for adults – in fact, new foods can in some cases be intimidating for adults. A small child is usually overcome by this fear at the age of about five years.

Getting to know food and learning through imitation

Parents are role models for their children, and family habits play a very important role in a child’s behavior. If adults are always willing to try new foods and new things in general, children will have the same attitude towards life.

So the best way to help your child try new foods is to eat them yourself first. Imitating is related to the confidence and security that parents in the family provide. In fact, this is also true for older siblings.

How should you give your baby new foods?

Meals should always be a positive and joyful experience for the baby with no punishment. It is worth teaching a child at an early age that eating healthy foods is also fun. Forcing a baby to eat certain foods makes him hate those foods. It’s also good to remember that sometimes a child just simply likes some flavors more than others.

An attempt can be made to entice a child to eat new foods by combining them with his or her favorite foods. The most important thing is to make sure that the child’s diet only includes foods that are highly nutritious for the child.

Vary the way you present your food

Colors are always a great help to make your baby more willing to try new foods. Don’t forget that food creates an impression through the sense of sight – if its appearance isn’t pleasing to the baby, he or she will probably be reluctant to try it.

Sometimes the fact that a little one doesn’t like new food, of course, has nothing to do with this taste. The reason for reluctance to try may be the appearance of the food or how it feels.

Many fruits look very fun or beautiful and can be cut into small pieces or given to the baby in its natural form. However, it can be quite difficult for a baby to chew fruit when there are only a few teeth.

If your baby doesn’t like fruit in the form of a puree – they’re not very pretty – keep in mind that the benefit is always that it’s easy for a little one to eat pureed foods.

Let your baby play and experiment with food

Fighting new foods isn’t necessarily related in any way to the exact fruit or vegetable you’re trying to get your baby to eat. This should also take into account the fact that sometimes cutlery can be very scary for a baby. A good method of getting a child to try new foods is to get them to put them in their mouths with their own hands.

What should be avoided in order for a baby to agree to try a particular food?

Some parents try to get their baby to agree to eat by means that, instead of easing the situation, make it even harder to keep new foods. This is often due to the ignorance of the parents, but on the other hand it can be caused by the frustration of failure.

One of the most common mistakes is trying to get the baby to pay attention to something other than food. For example, parents may use TV or YouTube videos for this purpose, but meals should always be just for eating. They are an opportunity for the family to spend time together and enjoy the food on the table.

However, the worst mistake in trying to get a baby to taste new food is coercion. There are parents who practically insert a spoon into their baby’s mouth without even giving them enough time to swallow the food they have already received.

For a baby, this can be painful at first, but also traumatic. In addition, it is not at all good for a child to raise him or her through a system of punishments and rewards — this often results in trauma as well as many other unhealthy phenomena in the child’s development.