Up until now, you may have been going through major feeding struggles with your toddler. Or perhaps everything has been great so far and you simply don’t want to mess things up. Either way, we want to introduce you to the underlying philosophy of this class:
Both parents and children have their own unique job description when it comes to feeding. Parents can’t do the kids’ job. Kids can’t do the parents’ job. Stress, power-struggles, and feeding problems happen when either the parent or the child tries to do the other’s job.
At the core of this philosophy is “The Division of Responsibility in Feeding” by dietitian and feeding expert Ellyn Satter. Her work created a paradigm shift in current thinking about feeding children. We have used it with our own kids and were thrilled and relieved with how it changed our feeding lives. We have used it in our nutrition practices and have been pleased with how it has helped our patients.
It changed everything about how we thought about feeding toddlers. We know this way of feeding can do wonders for you and your toddler too. And decades of research confirm that this feeding approach indeed helps children be the best eaters they can as well as build a healthy relationship with food in the future.
As dietitians, we wanted to reach more moms with this knowledge that changed our own lives. So we took this body of scientific research and created this practical step-by-step course just for moms of toddlers.
Our goal in this month-long course is to get right into the tough stuff with you. We want to help you learn this feeding system, to understand it, to take action and make it work for your family. We want to allow you to get feedback, troubleshoot problems and fix those problems to get you and your toddler to a stress-free and happy feeding place.
THE BASIC TENETS
The parent’s job is to decide the when, what, and where of their child’s eating:
- Set the eating times (when)
- Select the food to be served (what)
- Choose the location for eating (where)
So that is your new “Feeding Job Description.” Notice what is NOT part of your feeding job description: your child’s eating. Because yours is a feeding job. The task of eating belongs to your child.
Your child’s job is to decide whether to eat and how much to eat of what is offered:
- Eat a little
- Eat a lot
- Don’t eat
As hinted earlier, this is a model based in trust, rather than control.
Kids must be able to trust that parents will meet their needs
- They will be fed reliably
- They will feel safe rather than anxious at the table
- They will find appealing food to eat
Parents must be able to trust that kids will eat appropriately
- Kids know how much to eat
- Kids will learn to eat what the family eats
- Kids will grow to get the bodies that are right for them
You each have your own job description. They don’t overlap. Things will work out best when you stick to yours. We have to trust our kids to do their job as well as be trustworthy by doing our job.
As simple as this sounds, mistakes stemming from a job mix-up happen all the time in families. We see them in our practice regularly. Conversely, setting things right with respect to who has the feeding jobs and who has the eating jobs can work wonders for your child’s eating.
The healthiest feeding option for today involves faithfully doing your feeding job: Setting the right structure and giving the right freedom. This means setting structured meal and snack times that prevent grazing (structure), but allowing a child to eat as much or as little (freedom) as they need within those eating times.
Parents also choose the food (responsibility in terms of nutrition) but aren’t dogmatic and restrictive (freedom) because they choose to include kids’ favorites (making wise use of our abundant food supply) in a way that pleases parents and kids.
There’s no bribery needed because kids are capable of learning to eat what the family eats — just like kids in Japan learn to like their family’s Japanese food, Adina learned to like the Romanian food of her youth, and Natalia learned to like her family’s Russian fare.
WHY STICKING TO FEEDING JOBS IS IMPORTANT
The traditional or ‘control’ model of feeding focuses on how to get your kid to eat this, that, more or less. It puts nutrients before habits. It values any individual meal above supporting a long term healthy relationship with food.
The traditional model of feeding suggests a clean plate is a marker of ‘good eating.’ It may involve chasing kids around with food all day in hopes of getting something into them, it pacifies and soothes with food, and rewards with dessert for a meal well eaten.
Feeding according to your feeding job description is a totally different paradigm and in many ways is counter-intuitive. But we believe it fits today’s modern food environment far better and there is good research to back it up.
Research
One interesting study showed that out of an observation of 142 families, 85% of parents encourage a child to eat more than they want (Orell-Valente, Appetite 48 [2007]). Based on our observations and clinical experience, this percentage would probably hold true even with a much larger sample size. Parents feel very invested in getting their child to eat.
Toddlers are excellent, however, at eating what they need, provided there isn’t any interference. What is eye-opening, is that as kids get older, whether due to learned ignoring of fullness or a desire to please adults, they are more likely to eat larger portions if they are served larger portions. One study showed that 3.5 year olds ate about the same amount of a given food no matter how much they were served. But 5 year olds ate more as the serving size increased (Rolls, Engell, Birch, JADA 2000).
This is particularly telling because we want our kids to eat in response to hunger and fullness–not based on what might be on their plates. Following your feeding job description is the best way we’ve found to support kids in maintaining their natural self-regulation ability. In our research section, you will find more articles that supports the strategies we teach in this class.
Sticking to your job description helps self-regulation
When you do your job with feeding and allow your child to do his job, the volume the child eats is right for him/her. Children can be healthy at all sizes. Some are naturally smaller, and others are naturally larger. Trying to change your child’s body or feed according to whether they are “too small” or “too large” will likely backfire and ruin a child’s ability to self-regulate.
If you have worries about your child becoming too fat, know that being too restrictive with feeding and a general lack of structure tends to make children fatter. This is because both lack of structure and restriction can easily make kids feel insecure about their food situation. Food insecurity is likely to lead to food preoccupation and overeating when the opportunity presents.
On the other hand, kids who are pressured to eat more, tend to push back and want to eat less because eating becomes an unpleasant chore. And even if you accomplish getting a small child to eat more, the consequence to that is that you will teach them to ignore their own hunger and fullness signals.
There are thin kids with big appetites, thin kids with tiny appetites as well as large kids with large appetites and large kids with small appetites. It’s our job as parents to help our children maintain their amazing self-regulatory skills and let them grow into the bodies nature intended for them and feel good about it.
For these reasons, and more, we believe following your “Feeding Job Description” is the most effective way to feed children to accomplish the best long term results.
SETTING UP MEALS THE NEW WAY
What if Your Kids Are Used to Eating Different Foods than You Eat?
If your kids are used to eating completely different food from you, their parents, you’ll have to purposely and deliberately move toward each other. For example serve everything family style for lunch by putting ‘their food’ and ‘your food’ all on the table and offer everything to everyone.
Compromise by having just a bite of the food formally known as ‘kid food’ and offer them some of your ‘adult’ salad. It will send your kids that message that family meals are to be shared, there is no special food for kids, and they are expected to learn to like the family food.
You can take young palates and preferences into consideration without catering in simple ways:
— rinse chili before serving to reduce spice or set some non-spicy chili aside before you add the hot spices.
— add spices to a plate
— scoop out solids from chicken soup to serve separately
— Serve pasta sauce separately from the pasta.
Consider mealtimes quality time with kids. Put away mobile phones and reduce distractions.
Food waste is unavoidable as kids are starting to serve themselves. Teach them to start with a smaller portion and serve more if still hungry.
How do you keep to your job description at parties?
Parties are such a different environment than home, that it is not reasonable to expect the same structure. It’s okay to be flexible when the situation is occasional and out of your control. At most parties, food is left out the whole time and the food is different than usually served at home on a day-to-day basis. Then there’s all the excitement and distraction. It all adds up to a situation that would take a lot of controlling. At parties it is best just to let kids eat what they will, because it’s not an every day thing. Your child might take a huge plate of goldfish, but it is still his job to decide whether/how much.
The only ‘guideline’ we would give a child is that of etiquette. If there are only enough cupcakes for each person to have one, it is polite to make sure everyone has had one before going back for seconds. That might be a little tough for an 18 month old, but an older child could figure it out. Chances are your 18 month old will probably surprise you and not gorge on anything. Most kids tend to be so distracted by the other kids and activities they nibble a little here, a little there and barely eat anything.
We do recommend starting them off eating at a table, but even after they have excused themselves, since the food is still out there, don’t make a big deal about going back for nibbles.
Can they really eat as much safe food as they want?
One past participant asked about her daughter’s love of peanut butter. Mom was worried about what would happen if she didn’t place a limit on the peanut butter served with apple slices. Since peanut butter was her “safe” food, we encouraged Mom to provide as much as her daughter wanted even if she did not want apple slices.
The truth is that when we restrict certain foods (dessert competing with other foods at mealtime is a different story), they become even more desirable. And even if she eats a cup of peanut butter, it is not likely she will be eating as much every time she sees it.
However it will send her a very important message that she will and can eat as much of this food as she wants so there’s no reason to ever eat because it’s her only opportunity. This rule changes if the food in question is expensive or not available in big amounts for everyone to have a big portion. That’s just life and we have to be practical.
Things might get worse before they get better!
For many kids, experiencing the switch in who does what job will be uneventful but positive. They will be relieved to have the pressure lifted during mealtime, quickly relax their tense attitude about meals and gradually try more and more new foods.
That’s not the case for all children, in the short term. If there has been a strong history of pressure on them to eat and/or if they have had significant anxiety about foods and eating, it is very possible for a change in feeding jobs to initially make their eating worse. This is the case both for kids who have always seemed to eat very little and kids who’ve seemed to have voracious appetites.
In other words, kids who didn’t eat much may stall or eat less. Kids who seemed to be insatiable, might eat more. Can you guess why this might be?
The reason for this is because:
1) New-found Freedom and the desire to really hang on to that new autonomy and do what they have been stopped from doing so far. A toddler who seemed to have no “off-switch” with food who is suddenly allowed to eat as much as he wants, will want to finally feel like he can get his fill. “YES I no longer have to STOP, they’re letting me eat!” And the child who always had to be coaxed to eat will feel great freedom in being able to say “NO” and have their refusal taken seriously. They’ve been given new super powers, why wouldn’t they want to use them?
2) Testing—what kids do best. Like with all rule and boundary changes, children push to see if you’re serious. They want to find out if these new rules and freedoms are real. The best thing you can do is prove that you’re serious by not falling back on old ways. The pot of rice really is ‘all you can eat’ and the bowl of broccoli really is not required—not even a taste!
3) Learning to Self-regulate. If their previous way of eating was at all influenced by parental pressure, their natural way of eating in response to their body’s attempts at self-regulation will take some time to reveal itself. Even after the newness wears off, some children may take a while to really respond to hunger appropriately and stop eating appropriately. Your child’s natural appetite may be very different than what you expect. But your child will do their job in a way that is just right for them, if you stick to your feeding job.
Most toddlers won’t take a very long time to get used to the new mealtime rules, but some may take a while. The important thing to remember is that this is a long term way of feeding.
The ultimate purpose of feeding in this way isn’t to magically turn your child into a spinach gobbler overnight. It’s about setting the stage for long term positive eating habits, a healthy relationship with food, and to improve the chances that your child will learn to enjoy what your family serves at meals—all while having pleasant, happy, relaxed mealtimes in the meantime.
Coming Up Next: Addressing those typical toddler behaviors with your Feeding Job Description — how does it all come together?
Assignment/Discussion: What is your initial reaction to your Feeding Job Description (what’s your job and what’s not)? Imagine you start to follow it today. Does it sound refreshing or scary? What is your biggest fear about following your new feeding job description within your family? What is your biggest hope?