What type of "feeder" are you?
What’s just as important as meal structure and the actual foods you feed your children… your feeding style. I’m not talking about if you’re a, “boxed mac and cheese” type of mom or an, “I buy all organic” type of mom.
Feeding style is the interactions you have with your children around food and eating. Jill Castle and Maryann Jacobsen, two family feeding nutrition experts, say that your feeding style will have a profound effect on what and how your child eats.
Research groups feeding style into four different categories:
Controlling
Indulgent
Uninvolved
Diplomatic
As parents (feeders), we dip into all the feeding styles, but usually one dominates. Our dominant feeding style is usually based on how we were fed as kids – wanting to be similar to or completely different than how we were fed. Let’s go through each category so you know which approach you relate to and what affect it has on your child.
Controlling
This style is associated with many food rules, little regard towards your child’s preferences, and high expectations around mealtime. Does the phase, “Clean your plate!” or “Take two more bites!” sound familiar? Pressuring, rewarding, prompting, and restricting are common. We often adopt these practices coming from a good place – out of concern for our child’s nutrition and wellbeing. But research says that children fed this way might end up ignoring their own bodies hunger and fullness cues and eating less fruits and vegetables.
Indulgent
The “yes” parent. Very much the opposite of controlling. This type of feeding is where the feeder is oversensitive to the child’s hunger and fullness cues – allowing them to eat whenever and whatever they want. There is lots of grazing, “short-order cooking”, and usually over or under eating at meal-time (depending on the child). You might feed this way because you grew up in a controlling type atmosphere. Research shows that children fed using this style can end up confused with how much or what types of food to eat.
Uninvolved
This is NOT saying you’re an uninvolved parent. Simply put, food and meal planning are low on the priority list. You might be busy with work, extracurricular activities, or you might not have the knowledge or skills to plan and cook. While you put food as low on the priority list, your child will put it on the top of theirs. They might be worried or anxious about food, asking questions like, “When are we eating?” “What are we eating” “Will there be enough?”. They might fixate on food, over or under eat and have trouble trusting food, their bodies, and their care givers.
In practice, I see a lot of back and forth between controlling and indulgent styles. The pressuring and negotiating gets tiring and transforms into a “giving in” mindset… giving up, basically. And these feeding styles tend to have a “reverse effect”. Rewarding with food gives way to those “rewards” becoming even more wanted and valuable, and the forcing of food generally leads to even pickier eating. But there’s a better way!! It’s the Diplomatic style of feeding.
Diplomatic
Diplomatic feeding is similar to Ellyn Satter’s, Division of Responsibility where the parents and kids both have roles at mealtime. It combines structure and boundaries while giving respect to food preferences, hunger and fullness cues. It’s the parent’s role to provide appropriate meals and snacks in a timely manner. It’s the child’s role to decide what to eat (out of the food provided) and how much (if any at all). Warmth, responsiveness, and consistency around food and mealtime make for a positive eating experience where research shows children learn to self-regulate and eat more nutrient dense foods. This is the gold standard of feeding.
On this platform, I hope to provide you a lot of examples of what Diplomatic feeding looks like. But first, take a minute and assess what type of feeder you are – for both YOU and your kids. Do you have a lot of food rules you place on yourself and ultimately your kids? Do you plan for yourself, and thus your family? Do you eat whenever you want, whatever you want… have you thrown in the towel with trying to “do it (feeding) right”?
Please reach out if you’d like help navigating feeding yourself and your family. I’d enjoy hearing your story and help develop a strategy that works.