7 Creative Ways to Keep Your Baby Engaged during Meals
Children are programmed right from their birth to utilize their hands and mouth to understand the functioning of the new world around them! Well yes! Their sensory awareness, which is light, sound, and touch, begins right during the third trimester.
Did you know that it is during this time that the children can also differentiate between the voices and touch of their mothers from the others! Therefore, it is mandatory to let them be free to explore the environment around them after their birth. This is also the time when their capacity to learn is the strongest.
This also marks an important aspect of essential motor, sensory, and cognitive skill development during their infancy. Mealtime is an important syllabus for that development! And mealtime with Baby High Chair is like a foundational skill booster!
The challenge of engaging babies during meals
Have you noticed that sometimes when you are occupied by some work and someone calls you for the meal, you often tend to delay it? This is mostly because the work at your hands seems more prior to you than having the meal, despite your hunger.
Now imagine the same scenario with your child, where he is busy stacking the blocks and you force them to sit for the mealtime! They would of course resist being seated for their meals while their focus still lingers upon those blocks they were stacking, despite being hungry sometimes.
Babies are very curious to explore, as it is something they are born with. This makes them very active to be restless, run, climb, hold, throw, and perform varieties of stunts with the things present around them. This, thus, makes toddlers the busiest of the business due to their low attention span!
Amidst all these chaotic explorations, it is a challenge to engage babies during feeding for a minimum of 20 minutes too! Do loads of yelling, chasing, and struggling to keep your toddler in one place accompany your mealtime?
If yes, then this blog is exclusively meant to dissolve all your worries!
Signs that your child is ready for solid food
It is hard to believe, but children require more nutrition for their effective brain, muscle, bone, and organ growth and development during their infancy.
It is usually after six months that the kid becomes ready to intake solid foods due to their increasing nutritional requirements for their growth.
5 Essential signs accompanying their readiness for solid food include:
- When the child is able to sit straight and control their head and neck movement.
- Shows curiosity in food by reaching out for it or opening their mouth when the food is offered.
- When they understand how to push the food back in their mouth rather than pushing it out.
- When they mimic eating behavior and are able to chew certain solid foods.
- When breastmilk and formula feed still ends up making them ask for more.
Also Read: Baby's First Foods - A Straightforward Guide To Starting Solids
Why High Chairs?
After children’s readiness indicators for solid foods, the dilemma persists if high chairs are a good option for their mealtime.
There are various factors indicating their importance in initiating your little one’s mealtime:
- Babies have their own space to sit and eat like others in the family. In addition, being seated at family members’ level helps kids mimic and learn with ease.
- The exploration table in the high chair encourages them to play with various tastes, textures, and flavors during their mealtime. This also helps in enhancing their cognitive, sensory, and motor skill development.
- It also encourages positive posture development in babies.
- Having comfortable seating enhances their focus on food, thus cutting out unwanted distractions.
- Babies are also exposed to a family mealtime environment, thus enhancing their family values and social and communication skills.
How to Choose the Perfect High Chair?
Imagine yourself going to a restaurant and sitting on an uncomfortable stool without a back support and footrest bar! Would you be able to relish the yummy delicacies in front of you? No. Right! Well, similar are the babies!
A comfortable seating space is the bare minimum requirement to hold the babies in one place for their nutritional meal. The best method to choose the right high chair is 90-90-90. It means 90-degree flexion at the hips, 90-degree flexion at the knees, and 90-degree flexion at the ankles with a comfortable footrest.
A kids high chair with these features will make it a safe, comfortable, and cozy place for the messy mealtime to begin!
Also Read: How to Choose the Perfect Baby High Chair?
R for Rabbit High Chairs
R for Rabbit’s high chairs are exclusively designed for the babies, making them one of the most popular choices among the new millennial parents.
Some of the points that make them one of the best include:
1. They adhere to strict safety regulations, thus ensuring it to be child-friendly by eliminating any sharp design and edges.
2. The material is strong and easy to clean due to its smooth surface. The washable covers are an added advantage to maintaining hygiene.
3. Some high chairs also have multi-functionality, thus making them the most demanded.
4. They come in cute designs and sizes and are user-friendly due to adjustable trays and harness systems, besides having a space underneath to store the essentials.
7 Creative ways to keep your baby engaged during meals
Did you know it takes almost 8 to 15 different tries to make the kids consume a variety of solids, and most of the moms give up on 5 to 6 tries?
In order to make your journey easy, below is a list of seven creative ways to make them forever excited for their meals!
1. Colorful Tableware: A BLAST OF COLORS!
Ever noticed how your eyes wander towards the brightest color in the room? or how your mood is affected by different colors?
Well, it is similar to babies.
Infancy promotes attraction towards bright primary colors like red, yellow, blue, green, or orange or high contrasting colors like black and white; red and white; blue and yellow; green and black; or orange and white.
During their toddler years, this attraction transforms into their responses based upon their emotions.
So, brace up, moms! Here’s the first tip: Make mealtime a rainbow!
Be it choosing the color of the high chair to choosing the colors of the tableware or food, ensure it catches all the possible attention of your tiny distracted soul right into the meal space!
In short, prepare yourself to make a little colorful art exhibit for every meal to push them into the mini school of messy-edible learning.
Game Plan: The bright, colorful mealtime makes the food very appealing to their eyes, thus encouraging the little one’s curiosity to indulge in the messy mealtime. Different colors also help in mood enhancement, thus promoting a positive mealtime experience.
2. Interactive Toys: A TACTILE-O-PHILIC!
Consider this like a warm-up before their actual mealtime play!
Having interactive toys, such as plush toys, buttons, sensors, lights, sounds, etc., will always keep the little ones engaged at the high chair.
Sometimes giving those teething toys, suction cups, stacking, or any sensory toys with different textures and colors also helps in their sensory stimulation,thus also enhancing their motor, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving skills.
This can also serve as pre-mealtime activities for toddlers.
So, moms, here’s the second tip: Make interactive toys a pre-mealtime ritual!
Game Plan: Following this ritual with consistency will prepare them for the upcoming yummy mealtime. This would also reduce the stress by keeping them seated for longer durations on the high chair. Playing with sensory toys would also give them a boost to do the same with their food!
3. Themed Meal Times: A TALES-O-METER!
The themed meal times would always keep your toddlers on their toes excited for their mealtime due to the variety they witness at every meal.
We are all well aware of the fact that the toddlers are very curious for every little change or newness they witness around them. So, make the most of this curiosity to fill their tummy, besides also encouraging them to try different foods!
So, moms, here’s the third tip: Make mealtime a scenic detour adventure!
Various themed meal times that can be incorporated for baby high chair fun are:
1. Rainbow Meal: Incorporate all the possible colors in their mealtime space, like red tomatoes, purple grapes, yellow corn, green broccoli, etc.
Activity: Engage them into color identification games by repetitions.
2. Animal Safari meal: Cut the fruits and vegetables into different animal shapes or serve their porridge in the shape of a bear or bunny face to make them excited to dive into the jungle safari.
Activity: Encourage them to identify different animals by mimicking animal sounds and stories in association with them.
3. Under the sea meal: Serve toddlers with different undersea-shaped animals and plants, like fish, octopus, seaweed, etc.
Activity: Discuss sea creatures with your kids to increase their awareness.
Similarly, you can also have dinosaur gigs, as well as their favorite cartoon characters served to them during their mealtime.
Therefore, moms, prepare yourselves for some creative endeavors for your kids!
Who knows if you unwind a little artist in you too in the process! A win-win for both, right?
Game Plan: This little effort will not only make them eager to eat but also enhance their motor, language, hand-eye coordination, visual, and spatial awareness skills.
4. Educational Activities: THE INTELLECT BOOSTER!
Remember when back in school or college, when a concept is explained with live examples, one tends to grab it faster compared to a theory?
Well, what teaching ground could be better than a messy education meal time!
This indicates hitting two bullseyes at once:
- Keeping them engaged with baby mealtime activities.
- Preparing them for primary school.
So, moms, here’s the fourth tip: Make mealtime a learning playground!
For example, you could play a flying pea in the spoon, traveling through the air and having an emergency landing into their mouth, or count the number of sweet corns in their tiny colored plate, like, “Today we are going to eat one, two, three, and four sweet corns!” or you could also make them aware when something drops down on the floor, like, “One broccoli dropped down; we have one and two more to go,” and so on.
You can also keep asking them, “Is your belly full?” or “Are you done?” etc. to make them aware about the food intake.
Mealtime for kids is no less than an adventurous play field, where they get to crush, throw, eat, squish, explore, and giggle!
FYI: Ensure that your cleanliness phobia stays at rest for some years.You will have to witness a mealtime- battle every time until the kids learn to eat according to their own hunger cues.
Game plan: Playing with food by using their hands and eyes, along with the communication, helps in enhancing their vocabulary, mindful eating, focus, and curiosity in them. It also makes them aware of their hunger and tummy full cues, thus preparing them for the future.
5. Music and Songs: A MELODIOUS SUPPER!
Have you witnessed how, during a romantic date or just a casual hangout with friends, somehow the type of music plays a very significant role in enhancing your mood?
Well, that’s like the magic remote control to regulate emotions! Isn’t it!
Integrating music like nursery rhymes in relation to food or soft background music helps the children focus on their task at hand, that is, the postmortem of their food!
So, moms, here’s the fifth tip: Make mealtime a food-fun bar!
Playing music and songs during mealtime is an important part of baby high chair fun, as it helps in various ways, like:
1. The catchy phrases in the rhymes help children focus on the music and their work. Your regular communication will also improve their vocabulary, thus enhancing their focus.
2. Singing food-related songs and motivating them to open their mouths at certain phrases will definitely make it an interactive and fun mealtime session.
3. Encourage them to dance a little while they are seated and open their mouths at a specific beat. This would also make them excited to do that again.
Game plan: Following this consistently would not only make them curious to eat but would also help them learn various rhymes while also boosting their focus and memory!
Who knew a mealtime could be such a skill-boosting activity!
6. Variety in Textures and Colors: A TOUCHY-FIASCO!
A baby's sensory awareness skills are like a gateway to their understanding of the world!
So, moms, here’s the sixth tip: Make mealtime a sensory safari!
Incorporate all the possible textures and colors in front of your little munchkins and embark them on the journey of texture hunting!
You can begin by asking them, “This feels smooth, crunchy, or soft?” or “Pick up the yellow color” or “Let’s arrange a rainbow, or which color are we missing in a rainbow?” or “Pick up the crunchy and a bumpy one” and so on!
This would not only make them competitive to get your happy reaction but they would also love to explore on their own.
Game plan: With time, you would notice them communicating to you about the different textures and colors of the food around them by themselves. This also helps in their essential skill-building activity.
7. DIY Baby Food: A TASTY TEST-LAB!
This part demands your culinary expertise at play!
Imagine you have only one minute to have your kids hooked on the meal and the high chair!
I know! It’s pressure, but come on! It’s also your kitchen set at play!
So moms, here’s the last tip: Make mealtime a cosmopolitan game!
Below are a few tips. However, you can also customize it according to your individual tastes and preferences.
- Start by adding one spice at a time to understand which one they prefer the most.
- Spices have loads of antimicrobial, antifungal, and antiseptic and antibacterial properties, which also help boost kids' immunity.
- Go desi with simple dals and khichdi or porridge or mashed potatoes with a splash of ghee to enhance the flavor.
- Make fruit purees by mixing mangoes, apples, grapes, etc. to make them consume multivitamins, minerals, and fiber all at once.
- Prepare a “ready-to-cook” batch for them by freezing tiny batches of fruits and vegetables purees, ready to serve in no time!
Thus, an easy-pea-sy meal to feed with effortless satisfaction of kids’ hunger pangs!
Game plan: Variety keeps them engaged for longer durations, thus also helping them intake a nutritious diet. Serving these dishes in a creative way would enhance their focus more towards their meal.
Safety Tips While Using High Chair Hack
While exploring the kids with such a wide umbrella of high chair fun ideas, it is highly essential to ensure their safety as well.
- Ensure that the interactive toys or food items that are served are not too big, small, hard, or too sticky to prevent a choking hazard.
- High chairs are a lot higher than a normal chair, and thus, make sure the kids remain harnessed while being seated on them.
- Do not leave the kids unattended while they are busy exploring their mealtime sessions.
- Maintain proper hygiene after the mealtime. Also, have a little plastic cover under their high chair to reduce your work.
Tip: Make it a habit to leave your dining space after your tiny tot has finished eating. This would encourage them to stay focused on their meals, along with instilling family values and culture in them. This also ensures their safety effortlessly.
Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Using a Baby High Chair
Conclusion
Following these tips and tricks would not only ensure your baby’s positive nutritional meal time but would also encourage them to try out variety in their food.
As parents, you must also be cautious about cutting out your negative associations with food. After all, your children will learn what they actually see rather than what they are told to see.
Studies claim that the kids who are exposed to a variety of solids before the age of one tend to be avid eaters, compared to the ones who are not.
So, make the most of their curiosity and expose them to a colorful, textured, rhyming mealtime adventure of their lifetime!
Also, R for Rabbit offers varieties of baby high chairs, according to your different demands.
Do check them out!
Who knows if our collection of baby high chairs could suit your baby’s selection!
Also, refer to the other blogs to know more about R for Rabbit’s high chairs!
Lastly, have a fun-packed mealtime adventure!
