Sorry to point to another post, but this is SO good and instructive regarding establishing healthy eating habits with our kids from day one. I love what the author says about paying total attention when bottle or breast feeding so mealtime is established as a resptected ritual, not (as she says) a squat-and-gobble. Http://bit.ly/acNszN
Thanks McDume ,for the link. 
I always feel badly just pointing to a link (and it’s usually the same author), but it seems silly to paraphrase, so…
It’s an interesting article, but I disagree with a fair bit of it. Starting at the top.
Some children have no interest in “intimacy and social exchange” while eating. My kid will get angry if people distract him while he’s eating, and has since the day he was born. He doesn’t want to gaze up lovingly while nursing, he doesn’t want to cuddle with dad and a bottle. Give him the food and he wants to eat it, then moves on to be 100% focused on doing something else.
The bullet points that follow seem contrived at best. Kids that are securely attached will play independently just fine (save for during the period of separation anxiety that occurs at some point between 6 and 12 months) regardless of how they’re fed. That bond can be created any time not just meal times. And obviously children that have no interest in you while eating are mentally present. Present in the meal, where you want their mind to be. The third point is just insulting. You should not be feeding your baby, they should eat. There is a huge difference. You “respect and value” your baby not by allowing her to “participate in a feeding experience with us” but by helping her have her own eating experience.
If you child eats and is not fed, he will never be overfed. Although I have no objection to awareness.
I do not think it’s inappropriate to let a child nurse for comfort. There are better first choices, and nursing for comfort is not about quieting the child (as Ms Lansbury frequently claims). It is about offering them the comfort they want after acknowledging their feelings. Pretty much every time someone uses the expression “slippery slope” they’re trying to link two things that are not linked in a scientific way.
The entire “Small portions and no “one more bitesâ€.” section is difficult to grasp. I put a carrot in front of my son. He eats it. No spoons, no “airplanes”, no coaxing. I don’t understand feeding kids mush. When Zed eats something that I would eat with a spoon, he gets one, and uses it himself. He practised with a spoon before he was old enough for solids. Why wait?
And what is wrong with playing with food? Food is wonderfully multi-sensory, as it should be. All eating is playing with food. Typically with your mouth, but if a kid wants to play with his fingers and a spoon too, why not?
I completely disagree with high-chair free feeding. First, if your child cannot sit up unsupported they shouldn’t be eating solids yet. Second, who would want to eat sitting on the floor away from where everyone else eats? We searched for months to find a chair that puts Zed at the right height to the table. He eats at the real table with us.
Putting a child at a little table by themselves, so they can leave is misguided. Leaving the table before everyone is finished is bad etiquette and unacceptable in our house. We would not want to teach him something that we would need to unteach him once he’s big enough for the real table.
Sitting down to eat is important. I can’t disagree with that.
Claiming that mealtime is about social interaction at one end of the article and that it’s only about food at the other end is a bit hypocritical. Not that I explicitly disagree. Eating is about interaction, with each other and with the food. My husband read the article and stated that “teaching children this way is exactly why North America as a whole lacks the rich food culture present in other parts of the world. Adults play with their food everywhere else in the world, and they aren’t overweight. Food should be fun, not tedious.”
The best way for children to learn healthy eating is to let them explore their food in the same manner you let them explore the rest of their world: With some supervision and a fair amount of free reign. The child should be directing the level of interaction between themselves, you and their food.
CVV - my apologies for disappearing. I was spending some time with the family prior to school starting (not sure HOW I feel about that!)
It’s great that your baby is so focused on feeding. I think the article was talking about NOT distracting your baby by doing something else while he/she nurses or bottle-feeds, not ignoring the person in your arms by being on the phone, computer, etc. You obviously don’t, or your baby would let you know. And I didn’t take it as a suggestion that one should somehow demand our baby’s attention (the ‘eye gazing’ thing), just that it’s important to be present and responsive to HIM, patient and available to engage as much as HE wants to.
Regarding comfort feeding – I agree JL’s opinion is not scientific. To me, however, it just makes sense. We, as parents, create and then feed every habit our babies develop. My opinion.
Regarding the food… I think we share the same philospophy about meal time and the ritual of a family meal. It’s just getting there. My kids learned to eat by themselves (and pour water for themselves, btw) at a table on the floor. Not alone, but with someone or several people sitting with them. When they were finished, they left, and so did the table. My observation is that babies at small tables don’t play or throw their food, because when they’re finished, they leave. Babies aren’t built to spend long periods of time strapped in a chair at the dinner table waiting for their elders to finish. Yours may be different. Anyway, my older kids all seem to have a pretty healthy relationship with food now, and none was ever a problem in more formal situations (like a restaurant)… Okay, I’m lying. My littlelest is a boy, and he has a problem sitting still no matter what the situation. But he never threw food.
And while I understand your husband’s point, I don’t think he can blame all of North Amercia’s disfunctional relationship with food on this method. It’s very rare – fringe, actually – so I’m thinking fast food, corn syrup, the media, hydrogenated oils and other factors probably play a larger role.
I think what Ms Lansbury is advocating is better than what the average person does, however I don’t think it’s the best method. I think we need to train children to do what we will expect of them when they’re older. That is the main point of my parenting philosophy. The intermediary steps seem pointless to me. In the food department, we wanted him to eat real food with utensils at the table with the rest of the family, so that’s how we started. We gave him the opportunity to learn to use a spoon before he was old enough for solids. Now, at not even 9 months, he eats table food just fine while other babies his age are just starting the transition from mush.
Ultimately it’s not that big of a deal which path people choose. Some paths are easier, and you arrive at the destination sooner.
As for food culture, let me describe two dinners to you.
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Family members all arrive at a house, each bringing something for dinner. There is a bottle of wine, some fresh fruits and vegetables, meat wrapped in brown paper from the butcher, fresh herbs. Everyone congregates in the kitchen, drinks are poured and the cooking begins. Each person has a task to help make dinner, chopping vegetables, stirring sauces, making pasta. They chat while working. Once everything is prepared, the table is set and everyone sits down to enjoy their meal. After the entree, dessert is put into the oven. Some people relax around the table, others migrate into the kitchen, and a few go for a stroll around the block (and a few of the oldest sit outside for a cigarette, or a few puff on a pipe). Once desert starts smelling enticing everyone is lured back to the dining room to enjoy the last course. Then dishes are washed, and more drinks and conversations are had. At the end of the evening the family all retire to their own homes.
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A woman picks up some drive-thru on the way home from a horrible day at work. Her family sits down at the table long enough to eat, and then runs off to separate rooms of the house.
The problem with our food culture is that people honestly think #2 is a family dinner, that it counts as eating together.
It should be obvious that the kind of people who routinely eat like #1, wouldn’t be caught dead doing #2. If everyone ate like #1 there would be no hydrogenated, high-fructose, instant crap getting called food. It simply wouldn’t be accepted within the culture.
Does that make his point better?
I LOVE your description in #1. Beautiful. I cringe at #2. Cringe.