How to trick your 1 year old into eating

My daughter has never been picky with food. She loved vegetables, ate all the soups that I offered her and never complained. She used to get very distracted and needed to be reminded that she still had food, but that was our biggest problem. Then, all of a sudden at around 1 year of age she started refusing to eat. She would try to get out of the chair, cry, push the spoon away, throw away all of the finger foods that I was giving her and just reject anything I had to offer. That was pretty hard on me, because she was not gaining enough weight already, so when she started to eat 3 times less than she normally would I started to get very stressed out. I was terrified of having a picky child as well.

Now about a month has passed since then and my daughter is eating pretty well. I feel like I've picked up a few little tricks along the way, so today I’m going to share them with you.

• Give them their favorite snacks and finger food to distract them. My daughter's favorite snacks are: pieces of bread, panela cheese, sliced courgette and egg whites. She absolutely loves those things and would not pay much attention to anything else until she finishes them. So, normally I would offer her a nice selection of those snacks as well as other ones and sneak spoonfuls of soup in between (when she is done with one piece but the other one hasn't made it to her mouth yet). At least for me it works like a charm, because she would let me give her anything just to get it out of her snack's way.
• Put on some music for children. My mother in law always puts the same few songs for my daughter when they are playing and every time Sofia hears them, she gets very excited and starts to dance. So, if I feel like she is getting frustrated and is about to burst into tears, I put them on. You'll be surprised of how quickly and how good this works.
• Give them whatever it is you want them to eat when they are not paying attention. When they see you scooping a generous amount of something they don't like and giving it to them they have plenty of time to reject it. If they are distracted however, they would just eat whatever you give them. For example: my daughter is fascinated with light bulbs, so whenever I am talking about them, she point at the nearest one and starts talking back. I use this time to sneakily give her something and she doesn't even notice. Same thing happens when someone she doesn't know comes over. She spends the entire time staring at them and analyzing them, so doesn't even register what I'm giving her.
• Eat it yourself and share it with them. This works like a charm. If they see you eat something, they instantly want it.
• If they offer their food to you don't reject it. I don't know about other kids, by my daughter shares everything: she will try and give me a spoonful of her porridge, she will offer me to take a bite off of her celery and if she finds a little breadcrumb she is going to offer it to me. I think she does it because she is mimicking my behavior. I never turn her offers down. I don't always eat what she is giving me, but I feel like even pretending to take a bite and saying thank you does the trick. You kids are your reflection, they are repeating everything you do, so if you eat the same thing they eat, they will have a lot less reasons to reject it.
• Have a variety of different snacks and give them one after another, so your kid doesn't get bored. For example, I normally have some sort of liquefied soup, a few pieces of bread, a few stripes of chicken, some sliced vegetables. I would give her one of each, that way she doesn't get tired of just soup or just chicken. This might sound like something completely unnecessary, but believe me, it works.
• Give the healthy stuff first. If you know that your child prefers one thing over the other, give them their least favorite one first, when they are hungry. That way their meal will be more balanced.
• Let them eat by themselves. I don't know at what age they are supposed to eat with the spoon, but my daughter does already and she learned how to do it over one day. She demanded to have the spoon and then pointed with it at the plate. I let her try and she was surprisingly good at it (I mean, she still made a mess, but she ate most of it, so that is good enough). And whenever she starts to play with the spoon and poke her food instead of eating I just start feeding her with the second spoon and she is normally too entertained to protest.
• And finally, make it fun. Make silly faces, ask your baby to point at things that he knows the names of, tell him what sounds do animals make, if he manages to get the whole spoonful of soup to his mouth and doesn't drop anything, let him know that he is doing great etc. It's important to make the most of it, because if eating was boring and plain even adults wouldn't be so excited about it.

Anyway, I hope that these tips will help you and your child to have good and stress-free meals. Thank you for reading. Have a great day!