Food and nutrition are important to us and we know that a healthy balanced diet is essential to your child’s growth and development. Every day is an opportunity for us to satisfy your child’s appetite with delicious and nutritious meals and snacks, designed with their needs in mind, with a menu planned to broaden their food experiences.

To get our children off to flying start, we offer a breakfast of cereals, fresh fruit and wholemeal toast. At Lunch and Teatime, we serve a hot lunch and a light tea, freshly prepared by our cook.

A sample menu is available at the nursery. Please ask our Nursery Manager.

We encourage the children to drink fresh water throughout the day – we do not offer squash. Fresh drinking water is freely available for our children.  At snack and meal times the children are also offered fresh whole milk.

Fussy Eaters!

At Monkey Puzzle Otley, we encourage children to eat a varied diet with healthy snacks and meals, but we know that children can be fussy eaters and parents will experience stressful mealtimes when their child refuses certain foods. This can be a concerning time for mums and dads but fussy eating is extremely common, and there are a number of approaches that can help during this phase.

Children are unlikely to cause harm to their health if they don’t eat enough for a short time. If the problem continues, seek advice from a healthcare professional.

At Monkey Puzzle we don’t fret and fuss if a child refuses their food but we do encourage a healthy diet and eating habits. We never offer our children alternative food as this can further encourage fussing eating. We believe our children are offered enough healthy food during their day and they soon settle into trying new flavours and textures.  Children will always be offered a small portion of pudding (unless parents ask that their child only has dessert if they have eaten their main meal).

Reasons for fussy eating in children:

• It can show a degree of independent thinking
• It could be a demand for attention
• It could be a reaction to seeing their peers refuse food
• It can occur after an illness or infection

Here is some guidance and suggestions for improving mealtimes and fussy eating:

• Offer small portions at meal times. If these are finished more can be offered.
• Resist the temptation to give alternative foods when your child refuses to eat
• Keep meal times away from television, gadgets, music and toys.
• Eat the same meals with your child. Watching a parent eat and enjoy a wide variety of foods, will encourage them to try new foods.
• Sit at a table for main meals and keep distractions to a minimum, eg no mobile phones on the table.
• Keep meal times to around 30 minutes.
• Be fully present to ensure meal time is a period to chat and engage with one another.
• Involve your child in the selection, preparation and cooking of their meals.
• Leave at least 2 hours between snacks and meals and avoid sweets/sugary treats.
• Offer new foods alongside familiar food or in a different way e.g. chopped, mashed, roasted.
• If your child refuses a food at first, leave it a few days and try again – it may take up to 20 times before new food is accepted, but perseverance pays off!

We hope this helps and we are always here to work with you to help your child enjoy a healthy and varied diet.