Feeding Your Child - The Brazelton Way

When a strong-willed child is eager for more participation in feeding—holding the bottle, sippie cup, or spoon or flinging hunks of food from the high chair—parents can feel challenged. These touchpoints occur as a child is ready to take on a larger role in caring for herself. Parents sense the child's pulling away. They may try to regain control, lest they lose the child they have learned to understand. But parents can also learn to let go and feel proud of their child's new resourcefulness. When they do, feeding will again become a source of pleasure and a special time for being together.

I call these times of change touchpoints because I have found that passionate parents can reevaluate their role if I can reach out to them at the right time with the information they need—revealing the child's struggle as an important one for her future development. We hope you can use Chapter Two, "The Touchpoints of Feeding," to help you watch for the conflict between your child's goals for independence and yours for "getting her fed properly." As you learn to prepare yourself for these times, you'll find it easier to plan your child's meals, and encourage her participation in them.

Chapter Three, "Feeding Challenges and Opportunities," addresses common problems that arise as children learn to eat, and parents learn to feed them, in the first years. As you can see, this book is not meant to be an exhaustive guide to pediatric nutrition or gastrointestinal illness. While pointing out some basics, it focuses on the behavior and psychological issues that accompany feeding, from the beginning of life through the early years. Specialized questions, for example, about food additives, allergies, or digestive disorders can be pursued through the books and resources in the bibliography.

This experience became a "ghost" in my own nursery, an expression that child expert Selma Fraiberg coined to describe the effects of certain childhood memories on adult behavior. It helped set my future. I eventually determined to become a physician who could turn parents' passion toward positive approaches to child rearing, especially in the area of feeding. Many parents discover their own "ghosts," childhood memories about being fed, as they accompany their own child through the touchpoints of feeding.

By the end of the first year, for example, control over choice and quantity of food must become the child's. Many parents find it hard to turn that job over to the child. However, no parent can successfully force a child to eat: a battle over food is one the parent is sure to lose. Parents can only present the child with healthy choices.

Feeding oneself and making one's own choices is a necessary goal for any young child. Parents will have to learn to give up the delicious sensation of the baby nursing in their arms and to enjoy instead the mealtime company of a 1-year-old who is more interested in testing out gravity with her food than she is in putting it in her mouth. Ultimately, though, enjoying the pleasure of being together that goes along with mealtimes will be the most effective way for parents to support the child's development of healthy eating habits.

When parents struggle with a child over food—what to eat and how much—the child's hunger seems to lose its importance. Hunger is a basic instinct, controlled by a fairly primitive part of the brain. However, more complex parts of a child's brain are set in motion and can override hunger. This occurs, for example, when a child begins to wonder, "Do I have to eat this because my mother says I do? Can she make me?" When there's a chance for a struggle, a child's hunger may not be enough to push a child to eat. If there is turmoil over food between parent and child, food loses its primary meaning—as a necessity for health and a source of comfort and pleasure.

Sometimes such struggles arise from a parents' "ghosts," sometimes from limitations in the baby or young child's ability to suck, swallow, coordinate chewing movements, keep food down, and so on. Often these factors work together. Struggles over food are always passionate. Parents everywhere know that food is as necessary to survival as air, and they care deeply about their child's survival and growth. Children, for their part, have strong preferences from an early age. Cultural traditions are also an important part of a parent's passion.

We tried to increase their diet to an adequate level. We offered these women a daily 1,000-calorie liquid supplement. They came into our local center each day to get the supplement, take it home, and then—use it to feed the rest of the family! Our special liquid supplement for these pregnant women never reached their fetuses. The mothers felt they must first feed their already born children. The sad result was a lower than expected IQ by the time these unborn babies reached school age.

When we finally recognized the obvious, that of course a mother would feed her children before feeding herself, we changed our tactics. We began to urge these well-meaning women to drink the supplement "in order to have smart babies." When they understood that they were not just taking this additional food for their own benefit, but instead for their unborn babies' well-being, they were willing to drink it themselves. How powerful is the maternal instinct to protect her offspring!

Even in a land of plenty, parents are just as passionate about their responsibility to ensure that their child is well nourished. In fact, our increased understanding about the effects of nutrition on health and early brain development can lead parents to put pressure on their children. This can interfere with pleasure in eating—the second most important motivator for children after hunger.

There is still much to be learned about nutrition. In the meantime, a child who learns to enjoy eating a wide variety of foods will receive the balance of nutrients that, as far as we know now, will best help her grow up healthy and strong. For a child to develop this kind of curiosity and flexibility about food, mealtimes need to be fun, relaxing, and a time for a family to enjoy being together. In this book we suggest ways to keep them that way.

Pressure from others, along with a parent's sense of duty, can get in the way. So can a child's struggles to eat independently. Parents need to be prepared for the touchpoints in which struggles are likely to arise. The goal must, of course, be for a child to feed herself independently and to enjoy eating enough of the right kinds of foods to help her grow and be healthy. Parents will want to take into account the child's temperament as well as the developmental challenges of each touchpoint, which we will explain in Chapter Two.

Her refusal to be fed is a warning to her parents to pull back and let her try feeding herself. Since she has not had experience with finger feeding or with utensils, her first attempts to feed herself may be clumsy. A big mess at every meal—food on her face, her clothes, the table, the floor, everywhere—will be the inescapable price for her earlier compliance.

Parents may even be thankful for the slobbery mess when it comes—a welcome relief from the initial food refusal of this phase of self-assertion! Patience with such a child will be the saving grace. Let her learn how to take over the job of feeding. Offer her only two bits at a time of an attractive finger food for each meal. Then ignore her struggle and leave it to her. Keep her company, but don't cajole during meals. If and when she downs the two bits, offer her two more at a time, until she starts smooshing them or launching them over the edge of her high chair. This means it's time to stop—until the next meal. Don't let her "graze" between meals. And for now, don't worry about a well-rounded diet. Remember that this previously compliant child is quickly learning the skills of self-feeding. It might have taken her several months longer to learn had she been less passive and started in with her attempts to take over her own feeding earlier. Be patient and follow her lead.

Many parents of active children have asked me: "Should I feed her on the run? She'll never eat enough sitting down. She barely sits before she's gone. I wait until she's hungry, but she never is. I feel like I need to give her bits of food all through the day so that she'll get enough. What should I do?"

My advice has been: