Healthy Eating for Toddlers

I had fallen into the habit of "easy" when it came to fixing meals. This was especially true when, after the age of fifty, my husband and I added three young children by adoption to our seven biological children.

But when the emotional problems of the youngest child lead me to research ways to help him, I discovered that diet plays a very important role in anyone's ability to cope with stress.

I learned artificial flavorings, food colorings, and preservatives are big no no's for young children. I learned it was corn syrup, not sugar that was one of the main things that causes hyperactivity in children.

It was overwhelming at first to find things our family could eat that did not include these four things. They are present in almost all processed foods. I soon realized I would need to make most of our food from scratch.

After a short time of healthy, natural eating, my raging toddler became a calm, sweet boy. His speech improved, he began to show affection, and he was potty trained literally in a day. Another child quit wetting the bed, and all of their noses cleared up. The teenagers in my house reported feeling better, too, and they actually liked the food we began to eat.

Mornings were when I was most likely to give the children processed foods in the form of cereals and those little packages of oatmeal. I began to cook oatmeal instead. I would then add a spoonful of natural, real fruit jelly. The children loved it.

We have our own chickens, so free range; organic eggs were not a problem. I sometimes added natural, white cheese (yellow cheese being a big no-no), cooked in real butter instead of margarine.

We almost always have smoothies. I buy bags of frozen mixed fruit to use as the base. Then I might add bananas, cream from the raw cow's milk I buy, some kind of 100 percent juice, a little sugar or a combination of all of these things.

Smoothies make a wonderful afternoon snack, too. For this, I might blend the fruit with Blue Bell's "Natural Vanilla Bean" ice cream, which passes the natural product test.

Many times, lunch is nothing more than fresh, homemade wheat bread with cheese melted on top and dipped in natural spaghetti sauce. They never seem to tire of this lunch. I grind my own wheat in a grain mill, and put the bread in a bread machine on the dough setting. Once the dough is mixed, I form it into loaves and bake it in the oven. Although the bread machine will bake it for me, it's much softer when baked in the oven.

I bake our own cookies too, usually using oatmeal and Jiff's natural peanut butter.

I have made healthy eating a part of my morning routine. I get up early, put the ingredients into the bread maker, and mix up a batch of cookies. When the kids begin to drag out of bed, I mix up the smoothies, and they drink these as they wake up more fully.

The benefits of making sure my children eat healthy showed so quickly that we never want to go back to eating processed, dead foods. I feel better about myself as a mother as I watch my large family consume foods that I know will help them be the best they can be!