Hunger and fullness cues
Knowing how much to feed/offer your baby can be such a pain point for many parents. It’s important to remember that it’s your role as a parent to offer what, where and when food is served, and it’s your little one’s role to determine if, and how much they eat. Our little ones have a wonderful ability to regulate their appetite, so it’s really important we nurture this. We can achieve this through responsive feeding – that is, tuning into our little one’s hunger and fullness cues, to guide how much we offer. We do this when breast and bottle feeding, so why should this change?
This, along with learning how to build a balanced meal, is a key skill to learn as parents. Some days our little ones will eat us out of house and home, others they will barely touch their food. This is very normal and to be expected throughout infancy and toddlerhood. Another benefit of learning this skill as a parent is that it helps to nurture our little one’s natural ability to eat mindfully and pay attention to when they are hungry and full – something we as adults, have often been conditioned to ignore (thanks diet culture!!). Finally, it teaches you to really trust your little one’s appetite (THE hardest part of feeding your child!!), removing any pressure at mealtimes, teaching our little one’s that it is ok if they aren’t hungry and they will never be forced to eat, making mealtimes stress free.
Using finger foods makes it a lot easier to determine if your little one is full, as they are responsible for feeding themselves. Using puree/spoon feeding is a little trickier, but there are some key things to keep an eye out for, irrespective of how you choose to feed your little one.
Infant Hunger Cues
Grizzling or crying
Opening their mouth
Leaning toward the spoon/food
Excitability
Reaching for food
Engagement in a meal
Infant Fullness Cues
Acting disinterested or distracted
Fussing and/or crying
Dropping food off the tray
Leaning out of the chair
Windshield wiping the tray
Turning head away from the spoon
Refusing to open their mouth
Hitting the spoon away
Toddler Hunger Cues
Grizzling or waking upset from naps
Saying they’re hungry
Reaching for food
Toddler Fullness Cues
Saying all done/finished
Shaking their head
Pushing food away
Playing/throwing food
Distractible
Irritable
Wanting to get out of highchair/away from table
Spitting out food
I really encourage you to also teach your little one the concept of more and all done/finished. This can be verbal, sign language or a combination of the two. We started with the sign for more and finished, we were consistent, but Franklin favoured actually verbally communication these to us – he will happily say “all done” when he is done, and “more” when he wants more. We achieved this through simple repetition – at the end of every meal, whether that was an empty plate or Franklin showing the above signs, we asked him he was “all done” or “more”, and after some time, he started verbally communicating this to us. Below are the Auslan signs for finished and more.
Finished: Tilt fist, with thumb raised and pointing upwards, from side to side.
More: Hold hand clawed, palm towards chest. Move hand forward, away from chest slightly.
Finally, this is where avoiding distractions (TV, iPads, phone, books etc) is really important. Not only does this pose an added risk for choking as your little one isn’t focused on safely chewing and swallowing, but also distracts them from tuning in to those hunger and fullness cues. Additionally, it can also be so distracting that they don’t eat.