Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition
In this section you will find tips and information to promote healthy nutrition and weight in your child’s diet. These include tips on feeding your child, encouraging children to eat vegetables, among others.
Feeding 0-6 months
Please see our Infant Feeding page for information on feeding your baby.
Feeding 6+ months
The Department of Health recommends exclusively breastfeeding or artificially feeding your baby for the first 6 months of life.
Introducing your baby to solid foods, otherwise known as weaning, is recommended at 6 months of age.
By about 6 months of age, your baby is ready for solids if:
- they are able to sit up in a chair and hold their head up
- grab and hold food and put it in their mouth
and
- swallow food they have in their mouth rather than just spit it out
Breastmilk (or infant formula) will still provide important energy and nutrients for your baby between 6 and 12 months, and the food you offer will be ‘complementary’ to this, and a great way to explore new flavours and textures.
The volume of food will increase, and it will be no time at all when your baby has moved onto three family meals a day.
By the age of 1 year, your toddler should be offered 3 meals and 2-3 healthy snacks, each day. Your toddler should also be commenced on full fat cow’s milk.
Here are our top tips for healthy, happier mealtimes:
- Children learn from you! – Let your children see you eat the food (including snacks) and drinks that you would like them to eat and drink
- Eat family meals together, offering smaller amounts of the same food that you’re having, as long as this is not highly processed. Do not add salt or sugar
- Don’t make your child eat everything on the plate. Let them decide how much food they want to eat
- Don’t reward, treat or comfort your child with food. Use alternatives, such as story time or a visit to the park
- Give a healthy range of colourful foods
Keeping Active
Young children love to be active and explore their surroundings. By the time children can walk, they should be physically active for about 3 hours a day. This should include a mixture of different activities.
Play is an important part of being active, both for your child and yourself. Play requires a lot of your babies’ brain and muscle power encouraging social, intellectual and language development in addition to problem-solving skills.
As parents and carers, playing with our children is great fun; it encourages bonding and attachment, and you can build healthy habits which can last a lifetime.
Keeping older children active can be challenging. Older children require at least 60 minutes of activity a day. This doesn’t have to happen all in one go, it can be broken up into chunks to fit in with life and routines.
It is important that three times a week, children and young people are taking part in activities that gets their heart beating faster, which is vital for a healthy heart and lungs, and to build fitness levels.
