Food Choices!

🌈Choices🌈

If you have the availability, providing choices is a great way to give toddlers/kids a little more control and power within their environment. Choice-making also helps with problem-solving skills, building confidence, and fostering responsibility.

At your next meal or snack, consider giving choices, and say to your child, “We are going to have a vegetable for dinner, and I need help picking it out! Would you like to have broccoli 🥦 or carrots 🥕 for dinner?” While preparing a bedtime snack, you can try, “Let’s get your bedtime snack ready, would you like an apple 🍎 or a banana 🍌?”

When they make a choice, give them praise! “Thank you for helping with dinner tonight by picking out our vegetable!” If they don’t want to choose, you can acknowledge their response, and simply say, “We are going to have (insert food group), so I would love if you could decide what we should have.”

We all appreciate having the ability to make choices in our lives, and this is a great way to implement that opportunity into the lives of children! 🌈