Don't Feed Your Child

Don’t Feed Your Child


Mindful parents don’t feed infants and children, we let them eat. When I visualize a parent feeding a child I see a parent spooning food into a child’s mouth. This parent seems determined to get a certain amount of food and a certain type of food into the child. They may resort to distraction, rewards, or punishment to accomplish their goal—getting the child to eat.

A mindful parent offers food to an infant or child. This parent also chooses one or two foods to offer, but they have no agenda about the amount of food that needs to be consumed. It is not thel parent’s job to get the child to eat. This parent follows the child’s tempo, offering a new spoonful when the child has finished chewing (look at the jaw moving) and opens his or her mouth for more. If the child is self feeding, the parent sits back and observes, or eats their own meal.

A mindful parent lets the child explore the food with touch, taste and smell. The child is allowed to eat as little or as much as they wish. Observation of a child will tell us when an infant or child is finished. A rejected food can be offered again at another time, but it is not forced on the child, not even a small taste. In this way we allow our children to maintain their ability to react to their own nutritional needs. This is how we create healthy eaters.

New Foods for New Babies

New Foods For New Babies

Food introduction for new parents can be daunting. There are many books, charts and experts to tell you what to do and how to do it. My book “Simple and Savvy Strategies for Creating Healthy Eaters” condenses this information and makes eating with your new eater stress free and fun. To get started, here are several simple rules to remember:

• Make sure your child is ready for solids. You will know when this happens as your child will, all of a sudden, intently focus on you when you eat.

• Offer any food that is the proper consistency. (Think applesauce, or a little thinner.) You don’t have to start with rice cereal, or offer vegetables before fruits. Meats or fish, if they are moist and the consistency of applesauce are as good as pureed carrots or blended bananas.

• The only food NOT to offer is honey, either room temperature or cooked into a food. Honey may contain a heat resistant botulism that can be fatal to infants.

• Don’t entertain, just offer a small amount of food on a small food—if your child opens his or her mouth, put the food in. If your child pushed is out with their tongue or gags after 2 tries, stop. Decrease the thickness of the food.

• A grimace is not an indication that children do not want the food again. Stop feeding when your child does not open his or her mouth when the spoon approaches, pushes the food away, or keeps looking away.

• Offer only one new food every 3rd day. After each new food look for signs of allergy, including but not limited to vomiting, rash, swelling of lips or tongue, or diarrhea. If there is any breathing difficulty, call 911 immediately.

• Let your child be involved in the process. Don’t let them be distracted with TV, videos, games, toys, books or loud music. Let them set the pace of the feeding. Let them decide when they have had enough to eat, whether they ate nothing or more than they have ever eaten before.

• Remember that children’s eating patterns are inconsistent. Eating a certain amount one day does not mean that the child will usually eat this amount. Eating or rejecting a food does one day does not mean they will eat or reject the same food any other day. Food acceptance and quantity will change day to day and meal to meal.

Fattening Up Babies

We are so obsessed about weight in this country. Even babies are targets. Babies are supposed to be cubby. They are supposed to have several chins, a neck that is hard to find, and rolls of fat at their thighs, wrists and elbows. For the first year babies should be fed on demand. That means feeding them when they show they are hungry and stopping when they show they are done. A baby fed like this will grow appropriately.

Some babies have less fat than others. Over and over I have heard from moms (who are offering appropriate foods at appropriate times) of smaller, leaner babies that they were told to fatten up their child and get them to eat more. They have been instructed to put powdered milk in foods or slather butter on crackers or in rice cereal.

You should never MAKE your baby eat. This will alter their life-long perception about food intake. They will start eating for external cues instead of internal ones - hunger and fullness. As babies instinctually know how much energy (calories) they need, offering high density, high calorie foods will usually result in the baby eating less quantity. This has been proven is several studies. Babies given watered down formula drank more and those given concentrated formula ate less.

It is not your job to get your child to eat. If you have a thinner baby, you can try offering food more often, maybe every 1 ½ - 2 hours. If babies are hungry they will eat, if they’re not, they won’t. Follow their cues. They know what they are doing.