With the joy of being a mother comes the challenges of
taking care of your child;
with feeding them being quite the task. It is not a day’s job but something that will keep you
on your toes for months and years to come. Once the child starts moving around,
keeping them in one place for
the duration of the meal is the job at hand. Besides that, once you start introducing them to a
variety of foods, they start getting fussier with choices. As every
child is unique, mothers have to adopt numerous ideas to distract them long enough to feed them.
Satchel D’Cruz e Mascarenhas from Candolim has to be very careful while feeding her two-and-a-half-year-old son Jake. “Jake doesn’t like bland food. He also takes a peek at what the grown ups
are eating and wants the same. He likes fish and chicken on his plate
and sometimes, he can be fussy about food. One way of keeping him occupied
throughout his meal time is by
putting his favourite videos on the phone and placing it in front of
him. Unless the video is on, he will not open his mouth. I try to avoid using
the phone during meal times and sometimes
distract him with a different toy that will hold his interest until I feed him without any
trouble,” says Satchel.
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Saumya Naik from Ribandar has now mastered the art of feeding her daughter, Kadambari. “When it comes to feeding her something she isn’t
too fond of, I tell her stories and trick her with games such as peek-a-boo to distract her mind from what she is eating. She understands that she has to
eat food and she loves rice, fish and chicken. If she really needs distracting, she has
a few videos which she prefers watching, like ‘Peppa Pig’, ‘Finger Rhymes’ and ‘Dora the Explorer’.
Venita Fernandes from Taleigao is a mother of two, and while meal time with
her older daughter, Sasha, is a cakewalk, feeding Sofia requires some
creativity. “The biggest challenge is if your child is a fussy eater. I give Sasha a bowl of colourful eatables like vegetables
cut into cubes or puffed rice. It makes her feel that she’s eating by herself,
like a grown up, while I’m simultaneously feeding her the actual food. I
make porridge with fruits like mango and bananas as she loves fruits and with ‘tizann’ (I add chocolate Horlicks to it). I make her sit near
the window and watch birds, animals, cars and children or I make her sit on the
kitchen platform and give her spoons and utensils to play with. In the worst
case scenario, I turn on the TV,” she explains.
Ciza Andrade from Santa Cruz can breathe a sigh of relief as
her son Abner is five years old and prefers to eat his food on his own. Earlier, it was a game of
running around the house. “It is not possible for any child to sit quietly and
eat. I had to give him what he likes to eat and a toy in his hand. He loves
eating chapatis, puris, pulav, crispy snacks, pizza and pasta. If you put what
he likes on his plate,
he eats without any hesitation and on his own,” says Ciza.
It is also important to understand that a child doesn’t eat much as their
growth slows during the toddler years. According to studies, a toddler’s growth
is at a snail’s pace compared with an infant’s development. Toddlers usually
end up getting all the nutrients they need, even when their eating patterns are
erratic.
