Feeding toddlers is challenging… but you have the power to transform mealtimes

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The research driven ingredients for happy mealtimes are: feeling confident, relaxed and connected, being prepared and thinking long-term

At the Easy Bites app, we use years of clinical experience and research to help you harness your personal Mealtime Power and start enjoying positive mealtimes.

Ready to take the first step to transform mealtimes and get personalized advice from our team of child feeding professionals?

Feeling confident

Feeling confident at mealtimes not only feels great but also helps to create consistency and predictability for children. When faced with constantly changing food preferences or a challenging mealtime behavior, parents often feel unsure about the right way to respond. They may try many approaches, feeling that nothing works. Consistency helps create a positive feeding dynamic. When caregivers are confident about their feeding  approach, it’s so much easier to be consistent and feel good about how mealtimes are going, even when the road is bumpy. 

The Research: Parental self-efficacy is a term used by parenting researchers to refer to parents’ sense of whether they are doing a good job in their parenting role. It is very similar to the concept of parenting confidence. A review of qualitative child feeding studies highlighted the importance of supporting parents’ self-efficacy. The reviewers explained that parents may internalize their child’s eating, seeing it as a reflection of how ‘good’ a parent they are. Similarly, in a study of infant-feeding, researchers found links between parenting confidence and child vegetable intake.

  • Koh, G. A., Scott, J. A., Woodman, R. J., Kim, S. W., Daniels, L. A., & Magarey, A. M. (2014). Maternal feeding self-efficacy and fruit and vegetable intakes in infants. Results from the SAIDI study. Appetite, 81, 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.06.008

    Wolstenholme, H., Kelly, C., Hennessy, M., & Heary, C. (2020). Childhood fussy/picky eating behaviours: A systematic review and synthesis of qualitative studies. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 17(1), 1-22.

Feeling relaxed

With so much nutritional information around us, it can be hard to stay relaxed and positive at mealtimes. Anxiety or concern about whether a child is getting all they need can make it hard for caregivers to feel relaxed at mealtimes. Sometimes, this may be due to  misconceptions about what a child should eat in order to grow and thrive. Sometimes worry may be triggered by a child’s mealtime behaviors or selectivity. When caregivers are relaxed, this creates the best atmosphere for children’s eating confidence to develop. 

The Research: We know that positive parental emotions are really important when it comes to feeding children, with some US researchers claiming that they are “crucial” to the development of children’s healthy eating habits. Indeed, in a review exploring the research into stress and child feeding, researchers shared that stress can get in the way of responsive feeding. They also speculated that the pressure to be a ‘perfect parent’ may be an additional stressor impacting feeding. Just like stress, worry about the quality or quantity of children’s diet can also contribute to non-responsive feeding practices.

  • Harris, H. A., Jansen, E., Mallan, K. M., Daniels, L., & Thorpe, K. (2018). Concern explaining nonresponsive feeding: a study of mothers’ and fathers’ response to their Child's fussy eating. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 50(8), 757-764.

    Hughes, S. O., & Shewchuk, R. M. (2012). Child temperament, parent emotions, and perceptions of the child’s feeding experience. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 9, 1-9.

    Miller, A. L., Miller, S. E., & Clark, K. M. (2018). Child, caregiver, family, and social-contextual factors to consider when implementing parent-focused child feeding interventions. Current nutrition reports, 7, 303-309.

Feeling connected

Children need to feel connected and safe in order to naturally progress and learn, and mealtimes are no exception. When meals feel like a battleground, this is stressful for parents and actually makes children's eating worse. When caregivers emphasize connection at mealtimes, this is often enough to completely transform the mealtime environment and the child’s attitude to food and eating!

The Research: In 2017, Walton and colleagues published a paper calling for a relational approach to ‘picky eating’ - their paper has had an influence on how some professionals interpret child feeding problems and support parents. Similarly, researchers in the UK and the US have applied a theory from psychology - self-determination theory (SDT) - to child feeding. One of the tenets of SDT is that in order to learn and grow, all humans need to feel connected to the people around them.

  • Cormack, J., Rowell, K., & Postăvaru, G. I. (2020). Self-determination theory as a theoretical framework for a responsive approach to child feeding. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 52(6), 646-651.

    Walton, K., Kuczynski, L., Haycraft, E., Breen, A., & Haines, J. (2017). Time to re-think picky eating?: a relational approach to understanding picky eating. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 14, 1-8.

    Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., Joyce, J., Kerin, J., Webb, H., Morrissey, S., & McKay, A. (2019). Self-determination theory and food-related parenting: The Parent Socioemotional Context of Feeding Questionnaire. Journal of Family Psychology, 33(4), 476.

Being prepared

Parenting is a full time job, and taking charge of feeding and mealtimes is a big part of it. Often, parents end up becoming short order cooks, planning and cooking multiple meals for their family in an attempt to cater to everybody. When caregivers feel less stressed or overwhelmed by the planning, shopping and cooking, they can show up at mealtimes as their best selves.

The Research: Researchers reviewing qualitative studies of the family meal noted that expectations around meal preparation placed on women particularly, can lead to negative emotions like guilt and anxiety, along with the additional mental load associated with the logistical aspects of meal preparation. Mental load is a concept that is gaining traction in research today, especially from the perspective of gender. It refers to the combined invisible emotional and cognitive burden associated with domestic tasks like feeding a family. 

  • Dean, L., Churchill, B., & Ruppanner, L. (2022). The mental load: Building a deeper theoretical understanding of how cognitive and emotional labor over load women and mothers. Community, Work & Family, 25(1), 13-29.

    Le Moal, F., Michaud, M., Hartwick-Pflaum, C. A., Middleton, G., Mallon, I., & Coveney, J. (2021). Beyond the normative family meal promotion: a narrative review of qualitative results about ordinary domestic commensality. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(6), 3186.

Thinking long-term

It is natural to think that feeding children is primarily about nutrition. However, although nutrition is important, caregivers also have a huge potential to have a long lasting impact on children’s relationship with food, which will shape how they eat many years after they leave the family home!

The Research: A recent review of the literature, providing a picture of the current state of research into how parents shape children’s relationship with food, found that, at every stage of childhood, what parents do plays a very important role in how children eat. This not only relates to their choice of which foods to serve, but also to what parents model and how children are socialized in relation to eating.

  • Balantekin, K. N., Anzman‐Frasca, S., Francis, L. A., Ventura, A. K., Fisher, J. O., & Johnson, S. L. (2020). Positive parenting approaches and their association with child eating and weight: A narrative review from infancy to adolescence. Pediatric obesity, 15(10), e12722.