The consultant for our second book "Delicious Adventures" - child and adolescent psychologist Iva-Maria Daneva, introduces us closely to the creation of useful habits in children between 3 and 5 years old and how our new book can be useful to you.
Nutrition is an important process that builds, maintains, and protects our health. Nowadays, people are focusing more on this issue as we realize its importance.
Increasingly, parents are striving to build healthy eating habits in their children in order to avoid problems such as the so-called "emotional eating", overeating certain foods and ignoring others, which leads to deprivation of specific vitamins and nutrients. It is not uncommon for parents to encounter resistance from children to fruits and vegetables. The reasons for their non-acceptance can be many: specific taste, testing parental boundaries, rebellion, holding back emotions, reaction to events related to the eating process, stubbornness, defiance, insecurity, physical discomfort, etc. Children's refusal can even anger us. No matter how much we explain that eating certain foods is beneficial, if the child, for example, is behaving defiantly towards the parent, words will hardly do us any good. Rather, setting a limit or counteracting with the opposite reaction - acceptance and playing (but not reconciliation) would do us good. And this would help us, as we place the emphasis on the reason for the refusal and address the child's resource and need.
Building habits takes time and effort. "Delicious Adventures" was created to help in passing the different stages and features of building healthy eating habits. Since we ourselves have refused to eat vegetables in the past, this makes our mission even more personal and made us think about how it would be appropriate to present nutrition so that it is pleasant and desired by children. Practice shows that the visualization and presentation of nutrition not as an obligation, but as something that brings benefits and opportunities, predisposes children to engage with it more often.
This is also our goal – to create a faithful helper for parents through the story of Gogo and his friends, who together in a common mission related to helping and caring, will rediscover the advantages of eating vegetables, namely that they give superpowers. Between the ages of 3 and 5, the different phases and manifestations of the development of empathy are already more visibly noticeable. By establishing the idea of the main character's care and helping his parents, we reinforce this aspect of child development.
Feeding and responding to other people's emotions are a consequence of social activities and interactions, which is why we have combined the two motives.
The illustrations are also made with great care and an effort to make your main character recognize himself in ours, in order to achieve the so-called projection and make your child more open to applying the motifs. When a child sees traits, words and ideas that are close to him in stories and fairy tales, the chance of perceiving the given behavior as appropriate for him increases (in relation to eating in our case).
In “Tasty Adventures,” eating vegetables is presented and depicted not only as a privilege and empowerment, but also as a collaborative activity, an opportunity to care, have fun, and be more resilient. The emphasis on resilience and empowerment is no coincidence, as we believe that by focusing on children’s resources and needs, we increase the chance of building understanding and deep intrinsic motivation later on.
Because we are responsible towards you and our common mission, the book was created with the help of a child psychologist. This collaboration allowed us to create a book that is not only interesting, but also accessible, understandable and, most importantly, useful for your child.
Regularly rereading the book and experiencing the story emotionally will allow your child to immerse themselves in the world of our hero. Recalling the story during meals and emphasizing the superpowers involved can strengthen the child's perception process and engagement. We recommend viewing the story as an additional method and opportunity for a more fulfilling and bonding activity with your child.