Mouth Shut Movement in Children Aged 1 to 3 Years

Shutting the Mouth Movement or Not Wanting to Eat in Children Aged 1 to 3 Years

Once the baby is 6 months old, the baby can be introduced to complementary foods with breast milk. Complementary feeding should be done gradually and adjusted to the baby’s age. Mothers can find out about the process of giving complementary breast milk to their children so that the giving process can run optimally. In addition, providing food that is appropriate to the child’s age can reduce the risk of mouth-closing movements that children often make when starting to consume complementary foods.

Difficulty eating in children is always a problem that is often experienced by parents. This will give rise to excessive worry because balanced nutritional intake is really needed during a child’s development. There are many eating problems that often occur, starting from children refusing to eat, closing their mouths, or only wanting to eat certain foods or being picky eaters. Usually, difficulty eating begins to occur in children who have just turned one year old. Actually, this condition occurs not without reason. Children’s growth will be slower than before at this age so their appetite will decrease. Unfortunately, parents tend to pay less attention to this, which ultimately leads to stunted child growth.

1. Only Choose Certain Foods aka Picky Eater
   It is not surprising that children like certain types of food when mothers first introduce them to various types of food. It is true, this will be risky for children who only want to eat this food and refuse other menus that the mother offers, aka becoming a picky eater. In fact, if this continues to happen, children could lack other important nutritional intake that the body needs.

   How to Solve: Don’t give up on offering a new menu every day. In fact, the mother needs to offer at least 10 to 15 times the same new menu, until the child finally accepts it. There’s no harm in serving a new menu along with your child’s favorite foods.

2. Refusing to Eat
   Another problem that most commonly occurs is that children refuse to eat. Children can finish the food provided by their parents on the first day, but instead refuse the same menu the next day. When your thoughts change, your appetite may also change.

   How to Overcome: It takes extra patience when your child refuses to eat. However, don’t force your child to finish his food. If the child refuses, offer it again two hours later or give him another type of food or nutrient-dense snack to meet his nutritional needs. Forcing a child to eat or scolding a child will traumatize him.

3. Eat Only One Type of Food
   Sometimes there are children who only want to eat one type of food for several days, even several weeks. Usually, this is because children are attracted to foods that taste familiar. It’s just that consumption patterns like that often make parents confused.

   How to Cope: It is best for parents to remain calm and offer other food choices, but not by force. For older children, mothers can take them to the supermarket and ask them to choose the vegetables, fruit and snacks they like. When you get home, invite him to prepare food before consuming it.

4. Just Want Fast Food
   Fast food is not only liked by adults, but is also very popular with children. The delicious taste and varied menu displays make children tend to prefer ready-to-eat foods such as French fries, fried chicken or even instant noodles.

   How to overcome: The way to deal with children who have difficulty eating and only like fast food is not to store fast food at home. Mothers should provide healthier foods such as fruit, for example melon mixed with yoghurt, or fruit juice decorated with strawberries and banana slices on top.

To ensure a child’s nutritional adequacy, there is no harm if the mother keeps a record of the food and drinks consumed by the child during the week. Check again whether the child has received nutritional intake according to his body’s needs.

Apart from that, mothers can apply the following methods to deal with children who have difficulty eating. The following are tips that mothers can do to overcome difficulty eating in children, namely:

1. Make a regular schedule of main meals and snacks. For example, with main meals 3 times per day, and snacks 2 times per day. Milk can be given 2-3 times per day.
2. If your child doesn’t like formula milk, try experimenting with various products because your child might not like the taste of the milk they are currently giving.
3. Limit feeding time to a maximum of 30 minutes. If the child doesn’t want to eat, don’t force the child. If after 10-15 minutes of trying to offer food to the child and the child still doesn’t want to eat, stop the feeding process and wait for the next feeding schedule. In this way, children will be trained to recognize their own feelings of hunger and fullness.
4. Create a pleasant environment for eating, for example eating with your family at the dining table. If it is not possible to eat together, you should still train your children to eat at the dining table.
5. Prepare healthy and varied food, and try to make the meal attractive
6. Choose food utensils that are attractive to children
7. Invite children to eat alone with the family at the dinner table
8. Don’t get your child used to eating at the same time as other activities such as playing, watching TV, using gadgets, or going for a walk, so that your child isn’t distracted from eating.
9. Don’t give your child unhealthy foods (such as his favorite biscuits, fast food, or extra milk) as a substitute for the main meal.
10. Do not give drinks other than water between meals

There are several things that mothers should not do when feeding children. The most important thing is not to force your child to eat, let alone scold him. Forcing and scolding children actually causes trauma which can make children even less willing to eat.