Establishing healthy food habits early in life can support children’s long-term health and well-being. For young children, stress around mealtimes can disrupt these positive feeding dynamics by reducing a parent’s ability to respond sensitively to their cues. Parents may also resort to limiting certain foods or using them as rewards, which may undermine a child’s ability to self-regulate their intake(1). Conversely, mealtime enjoyment is likely to support positive interactions and healthy eating behaviours.
The Respectful Approach (based on Resources for Infant Educarers, also known as RIE) encourages cooperative, respectful relationships by treating children from infancy as capable and unique individuals, responding to their cues, and creating safe, consistent environments. We have previously found that a Respectful Approach intervention showed significant improvements in parenting competence and reduced stress compared to a control group(2). Building on this, we aimed to investigate whether this approach promoting connection, trust, and responsive parenting could also improve the mealtime experience.
The Happy Parenting Program is a randomised controlled trial where West Australian families with infants (aged 2–7 months) were allocated to one of three groups who met for sessions once a week for eight weeks: (1) in-person Respectful Approach intervention, (2) online Respectful Approach intervention, or (3) an outdoor nature playgroup (social control). The Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire (FPSQ) for children aged <2 years was used to assess mealtime dynamics(3).
A total of 131 families completed questionnaires before and after the sessions (in-person n=45, online n=41, control n=45). At baseline, 46% of all parents reported often or sometimes feeling stressed at mealtimes, primarily due to concerns their child’s dietary intake was too low, choking risks, or baby distress. Parents completing the in-person intervention reported a significant reduction in mealtime stress (from 59% stressed to 37%, McNemar’s test p=0.022), while no significant changes were observed in the online or control groups.
At baseline, 64% of all parents reported enjoying mealtimes. Significant improvements in enjoyment were demonstrated in both intervention groups: parents reporting enjoying meal times increased from 66% to 87% (p=0.007) in the in-person intervention, and from 61% to 77% (p=0.008) in the online group. No significant changes were observed in the control group. Both intervention groups also showed significant improvements in a variety of responsive feeding behaviours, which were not seen in the control group.
These findings indicate that the Respectful Approach, delivered either in-person or online, supports healthier mealtime interactions and responsive feeding practices. This approach to parenting may help to develop healthy long-term relationships with food in children.