Everyday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso Read Free Book Online Page B

kids excited about the new foods you are offering is to involve them in the process. Kids love to cook, and I urge you to try to make meal prep a family affair. Give each child an important job in the kitchen and talk about what you are making together. Have your children retrieve the required ingredients from the refrigerator or pantry and talk about what you are using. If you are using a vegetable they have never seen before, explore it together. Let them wash the vegetable, touch it, smell it, and break off a piece. Tell them how it grows, how it’s harvested, and ask them to describe to you what it smells like and what it reminds them of. Make it a process, an experiment, and an exciting adventure. Allow your children to choose a vegetable or protein source to try at mealtime and decide together how you will prepare it. Do not be afraid of making a mess. Spills can be cleaned, and getting the little ones in the kitchen will be the first step in nurturing and developing their lifelong positive relationship with food. If your children are allowed to be with you at the counter, stirring, tasting, pouring, and creating, they are so much more likely to eat the food they had a hand in making.
    Praise your kids for their efforts and make a big deal about how great it tastes because they helped! Remember that attention thing? Giving your kids positive attention and recognition for their efforts in the kitchen is like giving the little ones a magical “I will eat anything you want me to” pill! Another tip is to let your child name the dish you created together, or you can give the dish a name you know your kids will flip over. My kids love Sonic characters, and there is nothing better than Sonic Powered Soup. Of course having the kids help with every meal is not possible, but even getting them involved in some way can be helpful in egging on the excitement at mealtime.
    Other suggestions for making mealtime fun include having your kids make placemats that they are responsible for putting on the table before you eat and having them pick out new lunch boxes and special containers to pack paleo lunches in. I have several blog posts talking about certain lunch boxes that are environmentally friendly and fun. Show your kids pictures in this book and on the computer of paleo meals, and let them pick out a meal or two that they want you to make during the week. When they do not like something, just say, “OK,” and let them eat more of whatever else is on the menu. You’ll find yourself less upset about little Johnnie only eating steak and sweet potatoes but no Brussels sprouts than little Johnnie only eating toast and butter and nothing else at all. If you only have good choices and your kid picks one or two of those good choices, so be it. Look back over your child’s week of eating rather than each meal, and you’ll be surprised how “balanced” they actually eat when their only options are paleo options.
    If your kids are old enough to understand, and most kids are old enough to understand, if they ask why you no longer have their favorite non-paleo foods, be honest. Let them know that you are making better food choices for the entire family because you want to do all you can to ensure that your kids are healthy and not faced with scary illnesses later on in life, or even in their upcoming teenage years. More and more children are either obese or have other frightening health problems before they are old enough to drive a car. Something is very wrong with the foods that we are feeding our children, and realizing that we have the power to keep our children safe from the scary statistics should be exciting and relieving. You are in control of the foods that enter your home, and you have the power to let your kids know that you want them to eat the kinds of foods that our bodies are supposed to have.
    With that being said, I also firmly believe that you should not use scare tactics to get your kids to eat paleo. Talk honestly