Bg-Mamma

9 Practical Tips on Child Feeding

Tip 1
As advised earlier, let your child have a varied diet with food items derived from each of the four major food groups.
It does not really matter if he insists on taking an almost fixed group of food preparations for a few days as long as he take a balanced diet on the whole in sufficient quantity.
With patient encouragement and his own changing tastes, he will gradually widen his choice.

Tip 2
Milk and milk products are important sources of energy, proteins, calcium and vitamin A.
besides other foods, a child must take about ½ litre ( 500 ml; 18 oz) of milk and milk products per day from the age of one year onwards.
A child below five years should be given whole milk and not skimmed or semi-skimmed milk.

Tip 3
If your child is different and finicky about the common family diet you can help him by making more attractive and palatable food preparations.
For example, milk may be given as a flavoured drink or as milk shake, or in the form of yoghurt, ice cream, milk pudding, khoya etc.

Tip 4
Heavy snacks between meals should be discouraged as they spoil the child’s appetite for his main meals.
If need be, it is better to offer him fresh fruit (may be as fruit chaat), sandwiches with various fillings, salted chana (Bengal gram), peanuts and popcorn instead of sweets, cakes and chocolates.
If he insists on having sweet snacks, it would be better to give him home-cooked preparations like rice milk pudding (kheer), sooji ka halwa etc.

Tip 5
Sugar is a major cause of tooth decay in children.
You should cut down on sugary foods like sweets, chocolates, biscuits, cakes, fizzy colas and squashes.
It is better to give fresh fruit juices instead of artificially sweetened and flavoured drinks.
When the child takes chocolates, sweets or fizzy drinks, he should consume them quickly rather than nibble or sip them over long intervals.
This reduces the sugar’s contact with the child’s teeth and the resultant damage.

Tip 6
Do not be overanxious about the probable inadequacy of your child’s diet.
If he is fit and healthy, growing and gaining weight and is full of energy, don’t fuss about his eating.
You can rest assured he is receving adequate nutrition.

Tip 7
Mealtimes should be enjoyable, both for the child and for you.
Talk about things other than food and avoid getting into a battle of will with him on the choice of food items at each meal.

Tip 8
If a child is a poor eater, try and get some other children of the same age who are good eaters to have meals along with him.
A good example sometimes works.
Some children eat better in the company of their grandparents or some other adult member of the family for whom they have some special liking.

Tip 9
If your child tends to be overweight, reduce the use of cooking oil and ghee while preparing your family food.
Where feasible, grill or bake instead of frying his food.
If you are a non-vegetarian, trim the visible fat off the red meat and skin off fish and poultry.
It may also be preferable to use sunflower and corn oil to cook food for the whole family instead of saturated fats like ghee, especially if there is a strong family history of coronary heart disease.

Newborn Skin Condition

The newborn’s skin is rather delicate and is much more susceptible to normal rashes than an adult’ s. Up to half of all newborn’s between one and four days old develop from two to one hundred half-inch red spots which likewise disappear by themselves in a couple of days.
Not infrequently the baby’s skin peels around crease marks—particularly in the wrists, feet, and armpits.
During the first month after birth many infants temporarily develop pimples that look like acne on the forehead, cheeks, and chin (baby acne).

The face of the newborn has characteristics that are particularly attractive to the parent—the high forehead and the roundness of the face.
The eyes of all babies are greyish-blue at birth, which is not necessarily an indication of what colour they will later be.
Puffiness of the eyelids is not uncommon with newborns and spontaneously disappears in a day or two.
Excess tearing, redness, swelling, and even a watery or pussy discharge may follow administration of silver nitrate drops.

The newborn’s nose is characteristically flat and wide and gives no hint yet as to what its adult shape will be.
The nose as well as the mouth is commonly filled with amniotic fluid at birth.
As soon as this fluid has been cleared or sucked out, the baby breathes through its nose at a rate almost double that of an adult—thirty to forty breaths per minute.
The baby’s nostrils can often be seen to flare with increased breathing effort.

The baby’s mouth is well-defined and highly mobile. In the first few days the baby may develop blister like areas (sucking blisters) on the lips.
These are not unusual and disappear by themselves. The baby’s tongue is pro portionately shorter than that of an adult.
Parents Sometimes worry the baby is “tongue-tied, since the frenulum, the Connective membrane under the tongue, appears to attach so far forward.
Actually, this is normal the tongue grows rapidly and soon moves freely.

Because of the way the baby belly bulges , its troso is quite unlike of that of adult.The baby breathes abdominoly i.e. the belly fells rises and falls with each breath.
The baby’s umbilical cord begins to dry and turn leathery immediately after it is cut and tied.
This is due to the fact that the slight length of cord still attached to the baby is no longer getting any blood through the arteries, which have contracted.

Actually the remnant of the cord dries up and falls off with the help of bacteria that digest the dead skin cells. This process takes place in five to ten days and should not be sped up by the parents.
A slight bulge around the umbilical cord. It is not uncommon and is not dangerous. It generally disappears by the end of first year.

Caring for a sick child

Beware of spoiling when children are sick, it’s natural to give them lots of special care and consideration.
You don’t mind preparing drinks and food for them at frequent intervals or even putting aside a drink they refuse and making another kind right away.
You are glad to get them new playthings to keep them happy and quiet.

A child easily gets used to this arrangement and may boss his parents around and expect instant service. Fortunately, most children are on their way to recovery in a few days.
As soon as the parents stop worrying, they stop putting up with the child’s unreasonable demands.
After a couple of days, things are back to normal.

With longer illnesses, the persistent high level of concern and special treatment may have a bad effect on a child’s spirits.
He’s apt to become demanding. If he’s too polite for that, he may become excitable and temperamental, like a spoiled actor.
It’s easy for him to learn to enjoy being sick and receiving sympathy. His ability to make his own way agreeably may grow weaker, like a muscle that isn’t being used.

Sick Child Casual caring

Casual caring.
It’s wise for parents to get back into normal balance with the sick child as soon as possible.
This means such little things as having a friendly, matter of fact expression rather than a worried one when entering the room; asking him how he feels today in a tone of voice that expects good news rather than bad; and perhaps asking only once a day.

When you find out by experience what he wants to drink and eat, serve it up casually.
Don’t ask timidly if he likes it or act as if he were wonderful to take some.
Keep strictly away from urging unless the doctor feels it is necessary. A sick child’s appetite is more quickly ruined by pushing and forcing.

If you buy new plaything, look especially for the kind that encourages children to take an active role and use their imagination: blocks and building sets; sewing, weaving and bead stringing kits; painting, modeling and stamp-collecting supplies.
Deal out one new plaything at a time.

There are many homemade occupations, like cutting pictures out of old magazines, making a scrapbook, sewing, building a farm, town or doll’s house of card board and masking tape.
A little extra television and videogame playing is fine; too much make your child feel listless or encourage him to stay sick longer to continue indulging his obsession.

BABY TOOTH DEVELOPMENT

Baby teeth.
How and when will your baby’s teeth come through?

The average baby gets his first tooth at around six months, but this is quite variable.
One baby may get her first tooth at three months.
Another not until eighteen months. Both may be perfectly healthy and normal infants.
It is true that certain disease can Influence the age of teething) but this is rare.
For most Children the age of teething is simply a matter of the pattern of development child was horn with.

Usually the first two teeth to appear are the lower central incisors.
Incisor is the name given to the eight front teeth (four on the bottom and four on the top) that have sharp cutting edges.
After a few months come the four upper incisors, so the average baby has these six teeth, four above, two below, at about a year old. After this, there’s usually a lull of several months before the next onslaught.
Then six more teeth quickly appear: the two remaining lower incisors and all four first primary (baby) molars.

The molars don’t come in next to the incisor teeth but farther back, leaving space for the canine teeth. After the first molars appear, there is a pause of several months before the canines (the pointed dog or eye teeth) erupt in the spaces between the incisors and the molars.
The most common time for this to happen is in the second half of the second year.
The last four teeth in the baby set are the second primary molars, which come in right behind the first primary molars, usually in the first half of the third year.
Remember that these ages are all averages. Don’t worry if your baby is ahead or behind the schedule

Permanent teeth begin to appaer at about six year of age.
The six-year molars come through behind the baby’s molars.the baby teeth lost are ussually the lower central incisors.
The permanent incisors, pushing up underneath, come into position where the baby tooth roots have been disolved away.