How to Help Babies and Toddlers Enjoy Mealtimes

Stephanie Cohen, M.A., CCC-SLP, CLC 

Overwhelmed by all the information out there about how to help your baby learn to eat solid food? Start with responsive feeding! Responsive feeding is a child-led approach to helping infants and toddlers enjoy eating and learn new skills. This means we let babies and toddlers lead the way and respond promptly when they communicate that they are hungry or full. It also means we notice which foods they are interested in at the meal and offer those foods in a safe way. And lastly, we do all we can to help them be as independent as possible and learn to self-feed from the start. Responsive feeding is recommended for infants and toddlers by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization. This approach can help family mealtimes be more positive and enjoyable and lead to stronger family relationships, more consistent growth patterns, a more varied diet, less conflict at mealtimes, and greater independence at mealtimes.  

• You can start responsive feeding from birth by learning how your baby tells you they are hungry or full and responding promptly.
• You can continue to use responsive feeding when you introduce solid foods to your baby.
• We can let children lead the way at mealtimes through toddlerhood and beyond!

Find signs that your baby is hungry and ways to help your baby to feed independently in the full article

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Responsive Feeding for Young Children

Your relationship with your child is essential to happy and successful mealtimes! Using responsive feeding at mealtimes means that you support your child’s independent eating, pay attention to their communication, respond promptly, and let them lead the way. As a parent, you can give your child rich opportunities to learn about food and avoid deciding for them what they eat and how much. Doing these things can lead to less mealtime stress and more enjoyment at the table! 

Eating Tips and Recipes

Leia Flure, MS, RD, LDN Extension Outreach Associate, University of Illinois Extension

For many families, meal and snack times can be a challenge. Whether you have a picky eater or just don’t have enough hours in the day, here are some ideas that can help you to make these times more enjoyable for the whole family. 

Feeding Your Picky Eater

It can be frustrating to feed your picky eater! It is common to feel like nothing you try can work, no matter how hard you try. If you’re stuck in a rut with your picky eater, here are some guidelines to help. Remember, every kid is different, so not all of these tips will work for everyone. 

• Make Meal Times Pleasant. Turn off televisions and tablets to reduce distractions. Bonus points if you want to set a calming mood for the meal with relaxing music or even just a calm conversation. 
• Continue to Offer Foods (Even If They Did Not Like It the First Time)! Try preparing them in a variety of ways, including hot and cold, raw and cooked, and with different preparations. 
• Eat the Way You Want Your Child to Eat. Children pick up on how others around them eat, and often, will try to eat similarly.  

For recipes and more tips, see our Eating Tips and Recipes blog post.