Promoting Healthful Eating Behaviors: Parental Influence

Parent–Child Feeding Practices. Some parents want to become more involved in feeding and enter feeding battlegrounds by deciding for their child how much of a food must be eaten or by making treats available but controlling amounts and restricting access. Their children will lose their ability to respond to internal cues of hunger.

Other parents will labor over their child's eating by elaborate coaxing, bribing, or limiting food choices to only favorites for fear of upsetting their child. Mealtime becomes an unpleasant chore for all involved when children are put in charge of the menu. Children in this position miss opportunities to learn about new foods. When eating is not their job they depend on their parents to make sure all foods in all places are favorites. Thus the ability to eat a variety of foods in unfamiliar settings is severely limited and becomes a burden. The parent has lost control of the menu, focusing on getting the child to eat, while the child has dictated that the menu must consist of only favorites. The feeding relationship is out of balance, and both parties have crossed the dividing line of responsibility in feeding. Parents should focus on controlling food choices, not amounts, and allow children to self-regulate food intake. This is an important feeding principle to accept, and in the end it continues to benefit children by allowing them to meet individual needs by choosing to eat or not.

Parents' Food Choices. Parents' food choices for their children can reach extremes. Either end can be harmful, causing nutrient deficiencies, undesirable eating behaviors, and/or growth abnormalities. It is a paradox that our food system in the United States is the greatest/safest in the world but the plenty has overwhelmed families with endless choices, including calorie-dense vaguely nutritious foods (e.g., fruit chews with vitamins A, C, and E; heavily sweetened yogurt treats; low-fat pudding snacks which are low in calcium too; and fat-free, cholesterol-free cookies made with hydrogenated coconut oils). These choices are increasingly convenient to eat and direct our eating away from national health goals. On the other extreme, the marketing of health foods has frightened some parents into believing adult health foods are appropriate and better choices for their infants and children.

A review of research on child feeding practices reveals how parents and home environment impact children's eating behaviors, and in fact may be promoting obesity. Highly controlling styles, characterized by a parent determining how much of certain foods should be eaten, tend to backfire leaving children unable to control their intake of those foods. Similarly, when a parent insists that a child eat more of a healthy food, the food becomes a less favored food and less is eaten. It's not a matter of reverse psychology. Kids need to manage the how much and whether of their eating.

This stage is a beginning of letting go for some parents; they need to realize that it is not their job to get their child to eat. Healthy toddlers will eat when hungry, stop when satisfied, and be willing to try a variety of foods. With proper encouragement, toddlers emerge from this fussy stage happy and confident with their ability to eat and satisfy hunger.

Recommend that parents consider their influence as role models for healthful eating practices. As positive role models for healthy eating and activity they can influence their children. Make time for family physical activity so parents and toddlers both get their 1 hour of physical activity each day. Provide structured family meals in a calm and comforting atmosphere, ignoring unpleasant mealtime behaviors. Define acceptable mealtime behaviors. Support children's attempts to self-regulate intake. Increase variety and limit the purchase of unhealthy choices, fast foods, and soft drinks.