Dietitian shares top tips for raising a confident eater

Paediatric dietitian Jennifer Douglas shares her top tips for raising a confident, intuitive eater.

As parents, we all want to ensure our babies grow up happy, healthy, and well-nourished. Feeding is more than just providing food, it’s about building trust, fostering independence, and setting the foundation for a lifelong healthy relationship with eating.  

Your baby is born with the ability to know exactly how much they need to eat to grow and thrive. When you give your baby a milk feed, they will continue to feed until they are satisfied. This may be 5-10 minutes or 50-60mins if they are breastfed, or quarter of a bottle to a full bottle if they are bottle fed. The human body knows how to maintain a steady weight and will give hunger when re-fuelling is needed and a feeling of satiety when eaten enough. Children continue to have this ability to regulate appetite and satiety if they are raised in an environment that supports this.

Environmental factors can interfere with food intake, as there may be constraints of when you can eat (e.g. lunch served at 12pm), what foods are available (e.g. if you are travelling or whether you have been to the supermarket). There are also environments where you can’t eat (e.g. a library or during a sports training session), as well as sometimes pressures to avoid food (e.g. told that they are overweight), and thoughts they have to look a certain way, affecting food choices and many other factors.

As parents, you can help navigate this in a positive way by following the principles of responsive feeding. Responsive feeding is where parents recognise and respond appropriately to their baby’s hunger and fullness cues. Instead of pressuring a baby to eat or restricting food, parents provide meals in a structured yet flexible way that respects the child’s natural ability to self-regulate their intake. This approach encourages autonomy while ensuring that nutritional needs are met.

ELLYN SATTER'S DIVISION OF RESPONSIBILITY (SDOR)

Ellyn's simple but powerful framework supports responsive feeding.
It defines clear roles for both parents and children.

🔲  Decide what the child is having to eat 🔲  Decide when the child is eating 🔲  Decide where the child will eat	🔲  Decide whether they will eat the food (or not) 🔲  Decides how much they will eat

GENERAL SDOR GUIDELINES

1. Trust your baby’s appetite: babies are born with an innate ability to regulate their food intake. When they’re hungry, they signal by rooting, sucking on their hands, or making sucking noises. When they’re full, they turn their head away, close their mouth, or lose interest. By respecting these cues, parents help their baby learn to eat the right amount for their body. This may mean that your baby has only had half a teaspoon of food, or maybe two full bowls.
   
   
2. Create a consistent feeding routine: offering food at predictable times provides structure while allowing babies to develop their own hunger and fullness patterns. Your baby will be milk feeding on-demand for most of their infancy, but mealtimes can start to have some routine once they are established on three meals.
   
   
3. Provide nutritious and age-appropriate foods: For infants starting solids, a variety of nutrient-dense options such as soft-cooked vegetables, iron foods such as minced meats, and soft fruit and wholegrains, can be offered at mealtimes. Letting babies explore different textures and flavours without pressure helps them develop a positive attitude toward food.
   
   
4. Avoid pressure or restriction: It’s natural for parents to worry if their baby is eating enough. However, pressuring a child to eat when they’re not hungry can lead to power struggles and interfere with their ability to self-regulate. On the other hand, restricting food or labelling certain foods as “bad” can create negative associations with eating. Instead, offer a variety of nutritious options and let your child decide how much to eat.
   
   
5. Encourage family mealtimes: Eating alongside your baby is the start of baby learning about eating socially, and helps them learn how to eat by watching how the family chews food and uses cutlery. Family mealtimes can look different for everyone, especially with busy lives, but aiming to have at least one meal with your baby each day can be helpful. Offer them the same healthy foods you eat (appropriately modified for safety) and let them explore at their own pace.
   
   
6. Understand your child’s personality: Some children are naturally confident and are the children in the playground that throw themselves off every obstacle without hesitation, and there are some children who are more reserved and need time to think things through. Babies and children can have different approaches to feeding – some babies love food from day one and others will need a supportive environment to foster an enjoyment in eating over time. Knowing your baby and letting your baby guide you on what they are comfortable with supports progression at their pace. Along with fostering healthy eating habits, it’s important to cultivate a positive body image in children from an early age. Parents are the role models in building healthy body image and body confidence. Using a non-diet, intuitive eating model - parents can help children develop confidence in their bodies by:

+  Avoiding negative talk about bodies (including their own) and instead emphasising what bodies can do rather than how they look. We cannot tell what a person eats or how much exercise they do from just looking at them.

+  Avoid diets as a parent unless you have a medical reason to do so but focus on nourishing foods for the family and eating together.

+  Encouraging body diversity by teaching children that all bodies are different shapes, colours and sizes, and that there is no one 'right' way to look. The world would be a very boring place if we all looked the same.

+  Use neutral language around food. Instead of labelling foods as "good" or "bad," you could start with ‘everyday foods’ or ‘sometimes foods’, and then move to talking about how different foods provide energy, strength, and enjoyment.

+  Fostering self-trust by allowing children to recognise and respect their own hunger and fullness and continue discussion around respecting body’s cues for eating.

Jenny Douglas is a registered dietitian with around 20 years experience working with families and is a leading expert on baby and child nutrition. Co-author to the YUM cookbook with Nadia Lim, Jenny is also director of Jumpstart Nutrition – a company of dietitians working to improve nutrition for families. Jenny holds regular workshops around NZ and sees families in her Dunedin clinics or online. Visit her website jumpstartnutrition.co.nz or follow her on Instagram @jumpstart_kids_nutrition_nz .