8: The Division of Responsibility in Feeding Kids - How to Quickly Improve Your Child's Eating Habits

In this episode of Managing Mealtime Madness, we’re diving into one of the most effective frameworks for reducing stress at the table: Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility in Feeding (sDOR). This evidence-based approach ties into everything when feeding kids (babies through adolescents!) and helps parents create a positive mealtime environment while allowing children to develop healthy eating habits and a strong relationship with food.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What the Division of Responsibility is and why it’s a game-changer for family meals
• The parent’s role versus the child’s role at mealtime
• How to handle picky eating, food refusal, and higher/lower weight child eating habits
• Practical tips for making meals more enjoyable for everyone

Resources & Links:

• Learn more about Ellyn Satter’s work
• Post about Intuitive Eating For Kids
• Connect with us on Instagram

Transcript

Sarah Schlichter (00:09.006)
Hello, hello. Today I just have a solo episode, just me, myself and I. I wanna talk about a concept that's come up in a few episodes already and I'm sure will continue to come up and that is the division of responsibility. And the reason that this comes up so often is because it really is the foundation, the framework for feeding kits. So I wanted to take 10 to 15 minutes to just kind of go over it.

this concept is new to you as a parent. Hopefully it will reduce some of the stress you have around feeding because honestly, once you understand it, it really is meant to do that and take some of the pressure off of you. The Division of Responsibility was coined and developed by Ellen Satter. So she's a dietitian, but she's also a therapist. She has her own website. There is so much research behind this as well as

other resources on her website. So I'll put that in the show notes. I would urge you to read that for more since today is just kind of a quick overview. But essentially the division of responsibility is meant to break down jobs for feeding for parents and children. And once we break these jobs down, it can take away so much of the pressure that we put on ourselves feeding kids.

The foundations of the Division of Responsibility are the parents. So you, parents, caretakers, whoever's feeding kids, decide what is served, when it is served, and where it is served. The kids, the babies, the toddlers, adolescents, are responsible to decide if they eat it and how much. So really, once you make a meal and you serve it to your kids, your role is done.

You don't have to sit there and make them eat. You have done your job. Okay. And once we really let go of some of this pressure, I think you'll understand. Hopefully you'll start to see some results with kids eating, but you'll understand why it's so important and we want kids to develop eating competency. And this is how it happens. So this is for all age groups. So let's talk about babies. So the division of responsibility.

Sarah Schlichter (02:25.716)
says feed your baby on demand. So let him or her determine when they're hungry. You'll probably know from crying from screaming. So don't feed every four to six hours if your baby's hungry after two. know, like babies are kind of unpredictable. So the division of responsibility says feed them on demand. Now once they get a little bit older, it's easier to get into a feeding routine. You know, maybe they can go four hours without a bottle or nursing.

But in those early days, months, you do want to feed your baby on demand. And the baby is responsible for how much they have. So they might not finish their whole bottle and then they might be hungry in an hour. And that is intuitive for them. That is listening to them and letting them determine how much milk that they want to take in. Parents choose if they are breastfeeding or formula feeding. So that is kind of the food you're offering up. That is your choice and your role.

And then as a parent, we also want to help our infant stay calm. We want to pay attention to their cues, whether they're hungry or they're full, if they're turning their head away from the bottle or their nipple, they're generally, they've had enough. Now with toddlers and kids, the division of responsibility still has the same tenets. So again, as parents, we're responsible for what is served, when it's served and where it's served.

The toddler, the child is responsible for how much they eat and if they do eat it at all. Now this gets tricky because toddlers can go through selective picky eating stages. They might like one food one day and not like it the next. And as a parent, you don't really understand that. But again, once you accept that your role is just serving the food, you pick out what food is served. Don't ask them what they want. As a parent, your job is providing the food.

The child will always just be responsible for how much they eat and whether they eat the food that you offered. Now they can give you feedback or I don't like this food mom, or we had this yesterday. And as the parent, you don't have to cater to your child's needs. You want to be considerate, but you don't have to cater. You don't always have to serve their favorite foods or the only foods they eat because if you do that, it's going to be harder for them to learn to like new foods.

Sarah Schlichter (04:48.648)
really important tenet of this is as the parent, again, you determine when the food is offered. So it's kind of helpful if you're doing that on a set schedule. So you're not letting kids graze throughout the morning, right? If we're doing that, it's less likely that they're going to be hungry at lunchtime. Instead, if a child voices hunger, so let's say it's a toddler kid and you know, let's say it's a little after 11 and lunchtime is at 1145 or 12.

I understand that you're starting to get hungry. We'll have lunch soon and then you can redirect them. Let's go finish this puzzle or let's do three more puzzles and then we can head to the lunch table. Again, you don't want to just pass off a snack there because then they may be less hungry for lunch itself. So one important thing and this comes with learning your kids too is you want them to come to the table hungry. Usually you'll have better results that way.

Don't give them any other drinks either. Generally you can provide water between meals, but the Division of Responsibility just recommends not letting kids have food or drink between meal or snack times. Now as kids get older, I think there is a little more flexibility here. For example, once you have kids who are a little bit more active or playing sports, they might need either a bigger snack or two eating instances before lunchtime. I don't think that's wrong. I think you just have to

have some flexibility and know your kids. So maybe they had a really big swim meet or they were outside all day on the weekend the day before and now it's Monday and they're hungrier. They're asking for more snacks. You know your kids best, use some logical judgment there too, but again, you don't want them to be snacking and grazing all day. Another tenant that really helps with providing these principles,

is having regular meals and snacks together where you are sitting down with your children. Again, you want them to be hungry. You don't want them to be starving, like a zero on the hunger scale. Zero is starving, 10 is extremely full. You want them to come to the table hungry, so maybe like a two or a three, and you do this by not providing those snacks.

Sarah Schlichter (07:00.706)
but you wanna be able to sit down with them. And the reason this is so important is because they are learning from you, always, they're modeling. Even if you're having something and they're saying, yuck, or I won't eat that, they're watching you eat that. Whether you believe it or not, children are observant, they are taking this in. Another thing when deciding what the kids eat, we call it be considerate, but don't cater. Meaning,

You don't necessarily have to serve their favorite meals, their favorite foods at every meal, but there always should be a quote unquote safe food on the table. And I know I've talked about this with a few guests already. And the reason we say that is because you do want to be considerate of your children. Think about being three or four years old and your mom puts down a plate of food of all of these things you've never seen before. It would be a little overwhelming to have all of these new foods presented to you at once.

Whereas if there's a side of rice on the table or maybe it's apple slices or applesauce, something that you really like, mom put that food down and there's a new food, you feel safer and more able to try that new food once you have that safety in place. So that is why we always recommend having at least one or two safe foods on the plate or on the table, but don't necessarily make special food just for your kids.

Again, we don't want to cater to them. We want them to be involved in the family meal. We want to ideally be eating the same foods.

Now, if your child comes to the table, looks at the meal you provide and maybe they start to have a meltdown or they're getting fussy or I'm not eating this, I think we've all been there. The Ellen Satter Division of Responsibility would say, tell your child, that's fine. You don't have to eat this and show her you mean it. So let them eat what they want from the plate.

Sarah Schlichter (08:59.87)
Don't provide pressure. You know you can go play once you eat XYZ. I know that can be hard to do as a parent Just tune your attention elsewhere give them that option. Okay. I know you're hungry But this is what we're serving today if this isn't appealing to you, or you don't want this right now. That's fine You don't want to pressure them in a way to eat because that provides a negative Conentation around eating in general and what we're trying to do is move away from that so don't bribe don't encourage

Don't reward, don't punish them, don't make a big deal out of not liking the food or even on the flip side, don't make a big deal out of loving the food. You know, saying things like, I'm so proud of you, you tried your broccoli. You know, we want to try to avoid that and putting food on a pedestal. And I think a lot of us maybe come from generations where this was done or we are doing it out of good intention, but

We have the research now. We know a lot more when it comes to feeding kids and we really don't want to be cheerleaders. We don't want to provide food rewards. We don't want to bribe them or provide pressure. They also say we want meals to be enjoyable. And this is one of my very strong core beliefs. This is one of the reasons I started this podcast in the first place. Food should be enjoyable, right? Food brings us together. We want to make meals a pleasure.

Now that's not saying you have to like go above and beyond and do super fun shapes of foods for every meal because that can get exhausting. But occasionally if you're able to, if you're able to cut food into fun shapes or if you're able to serve a quote unquote fun food with a meal or have your child help you in the kitchen, it's nice. We want them to develop those core memories. We want them to look forward to meal time and we want them to learn to see a variety of foods.

So why is this all so important? Well, first of all, as a parent, I think it's important because it's almost giving us permission to not have to worry about every single thing that happens from the time you make the food. You make the food, you serve the food, your job is done. The kid gets to decide if and how much they're gonna eat. We as parents have to learn to bite our tongue. We have to trust them. We have to trust them.

Sarah Schlichter (11:21.09)
to follow their intuition. Some days they may be hungrier than others. It makes no sense as a parent sometimes, but we really want them to develop that eating competency. We want them to be intuitive with their eating. And the way that they do this is learning to trust themselves and knowing that we trust them.

Just be there, enjoy your food. They're going to be watching you eat. Maybe they'll be asking questions about the food you're eating. But keep in mind, a lot of the grownup foods that we're serving to kids is completely new to them. They have a lot to learn. If we were to compare this to other skills like learning to read, riding a bike, right? It's repetitive. It doesn't happen overnight. So that's why there's some statistic out there where you have to serve a food up to 20 times before a kid may accept it.

And the reason being it's just a learning experience. So don't get down on yourself parents if you've served green beans, you know, every night this week and your child just turns his head at them. Keep doing what you're doing. Maybe try serving them in a new way. Maybe talk about them in an exciting way. you know, what, does your green bean feel like? Is it crunchy or is it soft? Do you see the little peas inside? Sometimes I find that

as a mom of three, like doing this with my kids, even different ages, it sparks curiosity and curiosity oftentimes gets the best of kids. They want to know what the answer is. They want to know, is it crunchy? They want to know, is it soft? They want to know, are there things hiding in their green bean stock? Okay. So if we can try to remember this, even in the hard times, I promise like, this is one of those things where short term, it's going to feel really hard, but long term.

Once you see your child eating more, trying new things, being confident in themselves, it really makes a big difference. So just as to recap, your job as a parent, as a caregiver, choose, prepare the food, provide regular meals and snacks. So again, don't go six hours between eating. Of course, your kid is going to be a little cranky coming to the table. So have a regular interval that you decide that works in your house.

Sarah Schlichter (13:36.886)
Make eating times pleasant. So ideally you're not on your phone, the TV's not on in the background. Maybe it is, maybe that's pleasant for you. It's an ideal eating environment now that it's starting to get warm out and you like to eat outside on the deck. And show your child how to behave at meal time. You can have other discussions here about utensils or drinking cups or where food comes from or putting a napkin on their lap.

Saying grace, know, your family culture can really play in here too. So it's not just the pressure, the focus on the food. And again, just be considerate of your child's lack of food experience. They're new to this, but don't cater, overly cater, I should say, to their likes and dislikes. So those are our jobs. And again, the child, part of our feeding job is to trust our child, to eat, to eat the amount that he or she needs. And that's going to vary by day.

Remember, their bodies are still really little. They don't need a ton of food. Our job is to teach them to learn to eat the food they need, learn to try new flavors, and grow in the way that is right for them. So some other tips that I think are important to keep in mind. I mentioned this already, but sitting down together is so, so important. One of the backbones of

the division of responsibility and why I'm so passionate is just family meals. I grew up with family meals and we do family meals as often as we can. And that just means sitting down together and that can look different for every family. You know, it might not be nuclear family. It might be extended family. It might be neighbors. It might be sitting down and FaceTiming. If you have a partner who maybe is in the military or is traveling, I mean, we can be creative with this. There's no one right way to family meal.

But the benefits are tremendous. As we already talked about, the kids are watching you eat. So that is a lot of learning already within that one part. And then we do know that children who sit down and have regular family meals, they eat better, they feel better, they have more self-efficacy. So we use that term to describe they feel better about themselves, more confident. They get along better with their peers and they do better in school.

Sarah Schlichter (15:59.244)
So you can see that these benefits extend far beyond the table. They also talk about they're less likely to gain excess weight, do drugs, abuse drugs. And in fact, family meals have more to do with raising healthy, happy children than the income that your family brings home. And I think that's really powerful to just know that this is one thing that we could all try to be doing more to reap the benefits. There's gonna be ripples down.

downstream for that. Enjoy your food. We talked about this, but be considerate without catering, but for the most part, make food that tastes good. Don't worry about food always being quote unquote healthy or the healthiest. So ideally, yes, you have a fruit and or vegetable at each meal and snack. However, if you're having, you know, fried chicken one night or something that's a little heavier,

Don't shy away from that for your kid. You don't only have to serve them, quote unquote, healthy meals. Again, the act of sitting down together provides many more benefits than just the food on the plate. So I wouldn't spend too much brain power thinking about what's healthiest. Try to have different food groups on the plate and go from there. Now, a lot of people that have picky eaters will say, well,

You know, I understand this, but my child's just not eating and unless I bribe them, unless I reward them, they're not going to try new food. So here's how Ellen Satter, the division of responsibility talks about that. Again, your job is just to prepare the food and serve the food. The child's job is to see the food over and over again without pressure to try it. And eventually odds are he or she will try it.

The idea that we're providing repeated exposure allows this to gradually kind of sneak up on the child. They're watching you eat it. Maybe they're touching it. Maybe they're not trying it, but they're touching it. And that's another step. And maybe next time they'll smell it. Or maybe next time they'll compare two forms, raw broccoli versus heated broccoli. Maybe they'll put some on their own plate and look at it. So ideally each time we're moving a little bit closer to trying it, but...

Sarah Schlichter (18:24.262)
This is happening on the child's timeline, not our agenda. The goal is for the child to be relaxed and comfortable at meal time. And it could take time. As parents, we just have to be confident and consistent and patient. Because over time, children will try new things. The last thing I wanted to talk about briefly when it comes to the Division of Responsibility is weight.

And they, Ellen Satter does have a lot more information about this on her website, but I thought it was just important to kind of talk about both sides here. So parents who worry about their children maybe being underweight or not eating enough food. So all children, again, know how much they need to eat if we're not overriding those innate hunger and fullness cues. So if your child isn't eating enough, why do you think that? Are they eating less than other kids?

Are they smaller than other children? Are you often just pressuring them to eat more or drink more? Are they not eating at meal time, but they're eating at snack time? Do they need a bedtime snack, but you're not providing one? So there's some things to look into there. But Ellen Satter says, some children don't eat much, others eat more. Some children who eat a lot are still small, and some children are just small while others are just big.

So obviously talk to your pediatrician if you have concerns, but evaluate your child's growth. I'm used to hearing this from the pediatrician a lot, as long as they're on their growth curve. If all of a sudden, like really fast, they lose a lot of weight or gain a lot of weight, that might be reason to look into something a little bit more and go see the pediatrician. But try not to stress about it and keep the bigger picture in mind.

The division of responsibility says to feed your child as if you weren't worried about the weight. So still don't let them have food or drinks between meals except for water. She says that food handouts are gonna make your children eat less, not more. And I actually do agree with this, but I'll add that when you are, since you get to determine what is served, if your child is underweight, you can add more calories to the plate.

Sarah Schlichter (20:44.204)
You can buff up meals. can add chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds. You can use high fat dairy, yogurt, milk, high fat cheese. You can use nut butters. You can mix them into smoothies. So there are things you can do as a parent that maybe your child does need more calories, but you want to make sure they're coming from meals. Continue with family meals.

Have your child enjoy food, make the eating experience enjoyable. And then again, the high fat foods we already talked about, there's also butter, avocado, high fat salad dressing, ranch. Those are things you can also provide. On the flip side, if you have a child where you're concerned he or she is eating too much, and I'm using quotes here because...

This is so variable and it's hard to say that for a child because what's too much for one child is different from others. But the idea of a child eating too much is based in restriction. So children really only eat too much if they're afraid of going hungry. Maybe you have strict food rules in your house, you're not allowed to have sweets, maybe they're at a friend's house, they do have sweets and they cannot stop themselves. The sweets taste so good, they've never tasted this before, they don't have access at home.

So they have that all or nothing mentality. That happened a lot with clients when I was working with runners, that all or nothing mentality, that food restrict in peace, and then the binging or overeating. But when you follow the division of responsibility, your child will eat as much as he or she needs in order to grow. So again, as long as the weight is following that growth chart, the same percentile, she or he is probably growing the way their body needs to. But again,

Be consistent with the way you're feeding your child. Again, you determine what is served. Maybe your child does need to eat more because what is served is not enough. So just something to keep in mind. If you focus on the weight, that can backfire in whole other ways. I mean, we're definitely gonna do some episodes with dieting and kids and having a negative relationship with food and...

Sarah Schlichter (22:55.424)
All of the other things that can come along with that, but you definitely don't want kids feeling like they need to eat less or they need to lose weight or foods are bad. You don't want to give those impressions off. So just being consistent, following the division of responsibility, making me all time enjoyable, letting them have access to food at consistent meal times is kind of the way to go.

I'll close out by saying pressure always backfires. If you try to get a child to eat less than she's hungry for, she's gonna want more. If you try to get a child to eat more than she's hungry for, she's not gonna eat it. Okay, so I think kids are really smart and as adults, we can actually learn from them in the way that they approach food and kind of eating it in a way that feels good for them.

So that's all I wanted to talk about today. Just a brief intro to the division of responsibility. So now when we have guests talk about what that feeding framework is, hopefully you'll have some understanding and hopefully you can practice this at home. If this is new to you, practice it with your kids. Tag me and let me know how it turns out. Again, I'm on bucket list tummy underscore RD on social media. I also am at managing mealtime band is podcast.

and then try some of the recipes I have on the blog bucketlesstummy.com. You'll find plenty of age appropriate recipes for your kids. That's all for now. I hope you all have a great week and I will talk to you next week.