“Are you done?” Child Care Providers' Verbal Communication at Mealtimes That Reinforce or Hinder Children's Internal Cues of Hunger and Satiation

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Benchmarks for Nutrition in Child Care 2011: Are Child-Care Providers across Contexts Meeting Recommendations?

“…41 Limited child-care evidence also suggests Dutch 12 and Head Start 37 providers used significantly more non-internal verbal cues than internal cues. Our findings are consistent with previous research and extend the results reported by Ramsay and colleagues, 37 indicating that this pattern was consistent across all three child-care contexts. Developing training for providers that focuses on using internal verbal comments during meal times for cueing children to understand their hunger and satiety is a feasible and low-cost approach that can help children self-regulate their energy intake.…”

“…to cue children to their internal hunger and satiety signals. 37 However, providers used significantly more noninternal mealtime verbal comments than internal comments (P < 0.0001). The most frequent noninternal comments used by all providers included "Mmm.…”

“…Providers completed a checklist of 20 provider comments 37 to assess whether providers' meal-time verbal communication was supportive of children's internal cues of hunger and satiety. Providers responded whether they used the specific verbal comment during meal times using a Likert scale of 1 = never to 5 = always.…”

“…47 Similarly, sitting and eating meals together with children have been related to young children's healthy eating practices in child-care settings. 47 and 48 Therefore, CACFP and non-CACFP providers need to re-evaluate their approach to preplated foodservice by serving meals family style at least during one mealtime, 47 using internal verbal cues, 37 and sitting and eating meals with children to model healthy eating. 48 The Academy discourages use of controlling feeding practices because they negatively impact child eating 49,50 and are a risk factor for childhood obesity.…”

Providers perspectives on self-regulation impact their use of responsive feeding practices in child care

“…Specifically, when children are consistently offered larger portions sizes by adults without cues to their internal signals of hunger and fullness, they are likely to consume more calories (Frankel et al, 2014). However, when children are allowed to serve themselves and are given appropriate verbal encouragement, they are more likely to respond to their internal cues (Birch et al, 1987;Ramsay et al, 2010) which can result in less food intake (Fisher, Rolls, & Birch, 2003). Therefore, responsive feeding practices are responsive to children's cues of hunger and fullness and support children's self-regulation in eating.…”