As a parent, you might focus on choosing the right foods for your child, but did you know that how you offer those foods is just as important?

You and your child have a special relationship when it comes to feeding and eating, and like all relationships, it is based on trust. Creating a healthy feeding relationship with your child can help:

• Develop your child’s food skills.
• Encourage your child’s interest in food.
• Shape your child’s attitudes toward food.
• Shape your child’s eating practices for a lifetime.

The Feeding Relationship

You can help foster a healthy feeding relationship with your child by following the Division of Responsibility in Feeding. With this approach, both you and your child each have a role.

As a parent, you decide:

• What foods to offer.
• When to offer foods.
• Where and how to offer foods.

Trust your child to decide:

• Which foods they want to eat, if any, from what you offer.
• How much to eat from the foods offer.

By sticking to your role in feeding and allowing your child to be in charge of their role in eating, you can help them develop lifelong healthy eating practices. To learn more, visit the Ellyn Satter Institute.

Looking for more information on feeding your young child? Check out these pages:

• Feeding Your Young Child (1-5 Years)
• Picky Eating

Struggling to access food?

There are programs that may be able to help:

• Prenatal-Early Childhood Nutrition Supplement
  Monthly financial benefit for eligible pregnant people or families with children under the age of one.

• 211 Newfoundland and Labrador
  A listing of community, government and social service programs and resources available.

For information about eating well for less, check out Affordable Healthy Eating.

Services related to this information:

811 NL HealthLine/Dial-a-Dietitian (Newfoundland & Labrador) – Call 811 or 1-888-709-2929 / TTY 1-888-709-3555