Babies who feed themselves eat fewer sweets and are less likely to become overweight than babies who are spoon-fed. Those are the surprising findings of an English study of  parents’ reports of their children’s feeding routines as toddlers.

Sixty-three children were consistently spoon-fed by their parents. These children preferred sweet snacks. Over twelve percent of these children were obese.

Another 63 children were consistently self-fed, using fingers or their own management of a spoon. These children preferred carbohydrates like toast, pasta or potatoes as snacks and rejected sweets. None of these children was obese.

Lead researcher Ellen Townsend noted that it might be logical to assume that children who feed themselves eat more without parental controls. The results of her study suggest the opposite and indicate that parents may be inclined to “clean the dish” by encouraging a child to eat “one more bite.” Think of your own spoon feeding routine – including the time-honored pretending that the spoon is an airplane and other tricks.

The take-away appears to be this:

1. Make good foods available to children, including fruit, vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, cubed meat, and other dishes, in ways that are soft, easy to chew and swallow, and sized appropriately for toddlers.
2. Don’t worry about the mess. Babies will become more expert feeders with practice. Put a bib on baby, tie back her hair, and be ready with to wash her up at the end.
3. Feed frequently but let children decide when they are finished. Don’t insist your toddler eat everything on her plate. Small portions makes for less waste and less mess.
4. When you do spoon feed your child, watch for cues that your child is full. Never continue feeding after your child signals he would rather stop.
5. Remember that prepared “baby food,” spooned from the jar, is not necessary at all. Children can be fed whatever the family is eating, provided it’s chopped up small enough.

Feeding your baby can be fun for both of you. Lighten up and let your toddler take charge.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

If you’ve ever fed a toddler soft food, you know the outcome: food on her face, in her hair, between her fingers, all over the high chair tray, and quite a bit on her clothes and even on the floor. A mess!

But also a lesson. Babies who mush up their oatmeal and fingerpaint with the pureed squash are actually learning about non-solid objects. They are expanding their vocabularies and their notion of how the world works.

In a word, messy eaters get smarter.

It’s easy to learn about solid objects. Blocks, stuffed toys, cars and balls keep their shape and can be rotated and played with without changing. But how do children learn about squishy things? Researchers at the University of Iowa wanted to know.

So they put 70 16-month-old children in front of 14 non-solid objects, like applesauce, pudding, and soup. The children were allowed to do what they wanted with each substance, including touching it, smelling it, and eating it. After one minute, the scientists asked children to identify the same subject when it was presented in a different amount and in different shapes. This meant that children couldn’t rely on looks alone to identify the substance but had to know more about it.

This is important, as lead author Lynn Hall pointed out. “For a lot of non-solid stuff, you can’t really tell what it is just by looking at it. What matters is what it’s made of. Is that whiskey or ice tea in the glass you just grabbed? Or similarly, for children, is that baby lotion or strawberry yogurt?” Touching, tasting and smelling are the only ways to really know. Says Hall, if children have “a lot of practice touching and eating non-solid foods, then they know it’s okay to get in there and figure it out.”

Children in the study who did the most messing around with the foods in the one minute they had, were better able to identify the same foods when it was disguised. In addition, children did better when they were sitting in a high chair than when they were sitting at a regular table. The high chair spelled an exploration zone, apparently, and helped children investigate more.

What’s the take-away? Realize that when your child is making a mess with his food, he’s learning a lot about the food and what soft solids do. He’s learning how to think. Yes, he’s getting it everywhere and naturally you want some of that to go inside his tummy. But being obsessive over cleanliness in the high chair might actually inhibit learning.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.