me: dr,i am very concerned my daughter is not eating well,she is 14months,pls give me some ideas of a healthy meal plan for my child.she is 10 kg.
Hi Me. I wouldn't recommend a strict "diet plan". It is usually counter productive, especially in this situation. A plan that you could follow is to try different means of increasing food appeal to a child. At that age kids may go n apparently without eating anything at all. Nonetheless, they still find energy to be active and remain full of energy! In most of these kid; they do eat just about enough to meet these energy requirements, maybe not enough to show much growth in terms of weight gain and chubby cheeks and all. 10kg at 14 months isn't bad. Not at all. I think one think that you could try is to get her to eat normal adult food as much as possible (I don't mean spicy and chilly-hot food though). Try not to mash food any more. Try variety in taste, texture, colour etc. Make the food appealing on the eye (and attractive).
Just for a visual: a plate with a couple of table spoons of white rice, yellow maize (boiled is OK), orange carrots, some chicken/fish (fried perhaps), some green peas and a bit of thelli muraga fai. I will try not mix everything together. Maybe mix a few of them a bit (but allowing for the different ingredients to be seen). A kid at that age could be allowed to attempt partial self feeding (yes, allowing her to play with food a bit too). She is unlikely to eat all of it, perhaps might pick out some that she doesn't like from the ingredients. And it might take a few attempts to get her to enjoy the new presentation too. Keep changing the variety too.
Other things that might help: making meal times meal-times (and not use distractions as TV, books etc), having family meals (kids imitate people - and eating with family could help), not forcing food on child (forcing only brings out more rebellion from child), not filling her with juices and fluids (filling food takes hunger away), ..
