Responsive Feeding: Learning to Respond to Your Child’s Feeding Cues
As a parent or caregiver, ensuring that your child receives proper nutrition is crucial for their healthy growth and development. When your child will not eat, it can feel like the world is ending. Parents may yell or make their child sit at the table until they eat. Sometimes we result to rewards or threat of punishments, like taking away toys. Ultimately, when your child won’t eat, you may feel like you have failed as a parent. But, nothing could be further from the truth. Some children have difficulty with textures, flavors, and tolerating new or different foods. In the end, the child and parent often end up frustrated and mealtimes become anxiety inducing.
There are different approaches to feeding that can impact a child's well-being in various ways. Responsive feeding is an approach that has gained significant attention lately, and for good reason. It involves tuning in to your child's hunger cues and fullness signals to provide food when they're hungry and stop when they're full. In this post, we'll explore the benefits of responsive feeding and offer practical tips and strategies for parents/caregivers who want to embrace this approach for their child.
The Benefits of Responsive Feeding
One of the primary advantages of responsive feeding is that it allows infants and young children to eat according to their needs, which can help prevent overfeeding or underfeeding. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, responsive feeding can help prevent obesity in children by promoting self-regulation of food intake. It can also foster a healthy relationship with food while reducing the risk of feeding difficulties, such as picky eating or problem feeders.
Another benefit of responsive feeding is the promotion of social-emotional development. When a caregiver responds to an infant's hunger cues promptly, it creates a sense of trust and security, promoting attachment and bonding between the child and caregiver. Additionally, responsive feeding can help children develop important self-regulation skills, such as recognizing hunger and satiety signals, which can benefit them throughout their lives with other skills such as social skills, emotional- and self-regulation.
Tips and Strategies for Responsive Feeding
To implement responsive feeding, it's essential to tune into your child's hunger cues and fullness signals. Look for signs such as rooting, lip-smacking, or sucking to indicate hunger and pushing away food, turning the head, or becoming fussy to show satiety. Here are some additional tips and strategies for responsive feeding:
Avoid distractions during mealtimes: Turn off the TV and avoid using devices during mealtimes to create a peaceful environment that allows your child to focus on eating.
Offer nutrient-dense food combinations: Choose foods that are rich in nutrients such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats. Include a variety of textures to help your child develop their oral motor skills and promote healthy chewing habits.
Present food in an appealing way: Use colorful plates and utensils to make food visually appealing to children. Also, involve them in meal preparation and offer family-style meals to promote a positive relationship with food.
Eat Meals as a family as often as possible: Children learn about food from watching their parents. If you think about it, eating is not really just about the food, neither is mealtime. At mealtime, children watch others interacting with foods, get exposure to new and familiar foods, and enjoy the social interactions which occur during this joyful time.
Take away the pressure to eat: Always provide at least 1 of your child’s preferred foods at every meal while presenting the opportunity to interact with other foods. Do not place food in your child’s mouth for them, ask them to “take a bite” or insist they eat. Instead, allow your child to relax, talk with them, laugh, smile, and enjoy your food while spending time with your child around food.
Engage your child in cooking, at an age appropriate level. Research shows that children need up to 30 introductions of a food before they will interact with it or consider eating it. So, helping with meal prep in an age appropraite way is a wonderful way to increas exposures to new foods.
Where to Get Help When All Else Fails
If you have tried everything and the stress and anxiety continues, many pediatric occupational therapists are trained to help and support you and your child in finding the best approach to improving your child’s ability to tolerate new foods and eventually learn to taste new foods that were once scary. You can find a pediatric occupational therapist in your area with Google. However, not all occupational therapists use Responsive Feeding Approaches or are trained to support feeding. Make sure to ask if the local therapy clinic has trained feeding therapists, like Children in Motion does.
Resources For More Information
Get Permission Feeding Institute Website
Responsive feeding is a crucial element in ensuring a child's healthy growth and development. By tuning into hunger cues and fullness signals, parents and caregivers can provide infants and young children with the right amount of nutrition while promoting self-regulation skills and a healthy relationship with food. By implementing these practical strategies and tips, parents can support their child's nutritional needs while creating a supportive and comfortable mealtime environment.
