How To Make Children Eat Well After Ending Breastfeeding

A key speaker at a session on proper parenting, organised by PREMIUM TIMES, has advised parents on how to ensure their babies are well-fed even after they had outgrown breastfeeding.

The event, which focused on how good parenting can help in nation-building, held in Abuja on Saturday. It was co-sponsored by TW Magazine, and Parenting Resources and Initiatives of Atlanta USA. A similar event had held in Lagos.

Delivering a lecture on the topic, “Reconsidering the nutritional culture of families and its effects on children’s health”, the speaker, Adewumi Ayodele, said parents should find healthy ways of enriching breastmilk substitutes, like pap, to encourage children embrace feeding.
According to Mr. Ayodele, a nutritionist, a large number of children experience feeding difficulties after they had been weaned.

The problem, he said, was largely because most parents fail to apply simple tips that would make food products adopted as substitutes of breastfeeding, as enticing as breastmilk.
“The result of such poor nutritional culture is always a depreciating state for the child,” said Mr. Ayodele.
He suggested ways parents can make their children eat better.
“Blend groundnuts and add Soya beans. Blend that too a little then add blended fish, but be mindful of how your children react to such kinds of fish. If they like it, go ahead with it, but if they don’t, just avoid using it,” he said.

“Once you have done all that, that is where you have your reinforced pack, you will then sweeten it by adding your table spoon sugar and the normal milk for children, make sure that the quantity is sufficient enough to change the colour of the pap. Note that until the brown colour changes, you haven’t added enough milk,” he advised.

Another guest speaker, Sunday Dogonyaro, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Sao Tome and Principe, who spoke on the topic, “Fundamental life values”, said families should help children understand the virtue of tolerance and co-relation, as a key to addressing social problems in the society.
Mr. Dogonyaro said schools play a major role in molding children, and that most schools in Nigeria have failed to impact the culture of basic reasoning in children.

“No child should grow like an Island,” Mr. Dogonyaro said. “Look for the school that is a leveler to a large extent.  Critical thinking is at the root of progress and it is what brings development to any nation.”
Another speaker at the event, Binta Max-Gbinije, said parents must watch the kind of reward packages they give to their children.
“Let the reward be appropriate, at the right time and accurate,” she noted. “Let them know that not all that comes to them should be theirs.”
Mrs. Max-Gbinije spoke about the power of savings and how important it is for parents to save for years for their children’s future.

July 11, 2016