Food Fights?

Feeding is a concern parents of young children ask about a lot. Since I posted the article "First We Eat" a year and a half ago, parents have shared with me their own adventures and misadventures in feeding. Some had concerns about children who eat very little or are ultra selective, others about children who eat a lot or lots of just one or two foods. Parents worry about healthy nutrition, height and weight percentiles, unpleasantness at the table, and criticism from family and friends about their children's eating.

I really get it. Twenty four years ago we were the new parents of a premature child and worried about feeding concerns.When our child dropped off the weight percentile chart at age one I was full on freaking out.We lived in the SF Bay Area and I turned to pediatric nurse practitioner and parent educator, Meg Zweiback,RN, MPH. She lived near me and gave me great information and the confident approach I needed to meet the challenges we faced. I still highly recommend Meg's sound advice on all manner of child rearing concerns (you can click her name above to link to her helpful website). Alongside her own very effective step-by-step feeding advice, the best tip she gave me was to recommend the book "Child of Mine, Feeding With Love & Good Sense" by Ellen Satter, a registered dietitian nutritionist and social worker. Since Ellen published that book she has gone on to further study and research, updated the book, written several others, and produced mentoring materials for parent educators and dietitians to use in parent classes and workshops. Here's a link to her Child Feeding Ages and Stages, which is a very informative and quick read. Ellen's research and evidence-based feeding recommendations are recognized as best practices by the the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,  the American Academy of Pediatrics, Head Start, WIC, and the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (the USDA supports Kidspace's wonderful food program).

Besides her advocacy for regular meal and snack times with no grazing in between, a key tenet in Ellen's work has been The Division of Responsibility in Feeding. In a nutshell, it divides who has responsibility over what aspects of feeding. We use this division of responsibility approach at Kidspace.

"Children have natural ability with eating. They eat as much as they need, they grow in the way that is right for them, and they learn to eat the food their parents eat. Step-by-step, throughout their growing-up years, they build on their natural ability and become eating competent. Parents let them learn and grow with eating when they follow the Division of Responsibility in Feeding.

The Division of Responsibility for infants:

• The parent is responsible for what.
• The child is responsible for how much (and everything else).

Parents choose breast- or formula-feeding, and help the infant be calm and organized. Then they feed smoothly, paying attention to information coming from the baby about timing, tempo, frequency, and amounts.
The Division of Responsibility for babies making the transition to family food:

• The parent is still responsible for what,and is becoming responsible for when and where the child is fed.
• The child is still and always responsible for how much and whether to eat the foods offered by the parent.

Based on what the child can do, not on how old s/he is, parents guide the child’s transition from nipple feeding through semi-solids, then thick-and-lumpy food, to finger food at family meals.
The Division of Responsibility for toddlers through adolescents

• The parent is responsible for what, when, where.
• The child is responsible for how much and whether.

Fundamental to parents’ jobs is trusting children to determine how much and whether to eat from what parents provide. When parents do their jobs with feeding, children do their jobs with eating:
Parents’ feeding jobs:

• Choose and prepare the food.
• Provide regular meals and snacks.
• Make eating times pleasant.
• Step-by-step, show children by example how to behave at family mealtime.
• Be considerate of children’s lack of food experience without catering to likes and dislikes.
• Not let children have food or beverages (except for water) between meal and snack times.
• Let children grow up to get bodies that are right for them.

 Children’s eating jobs:

• Children will eat.
• They will eat the amount they need.
• They will learn to eat the food their parents eat.
• They will grow predictably.
• They will learn to behave well at mealtime." 
  ©2015 by Ellyn Satter

Parents who have adopted this practice in their households have reported an end to the constant "food fights" where every meal becomes an unpleasant power struggle to get children to eat. We can trust the research which concludes that over time a child's nutritional needs are being met and that they will develop competency in healthy, happy eating as they grow up. I can't say all my worry went away, but we followed this approach and our child moved from the 3rd percentile in weight at birth to the 10th by the time she was two and the 25th by age 11. She has remained petite all her life yet has a very healthy BMI. It's just the way she is. She grew to love a wide variety of healthy food, our family had pleasant meals together, and she's also turned out to be a fantastic cook!