Bringing up baby, healthfully

arents of chubby babies and toddlers look at their children with adoring eyes, but research out last week might add furrows of concern to their brows as well.

The research found that substantially more children under 6, including babies, in the USA were overweight or on the brink of becoming so in 2001 than in 1980. Many experts believe overweight children are at an increased risk of becoming overweight adults and developing diabetes, high blood pressure and other weight-related illnesses.

But parents shouldn't overreact to the news, nutritionists say. They can pay close attention to their children's natural hunger signals from birth and do a fine job feeding them. Or they can interfere with their children's natural ability to regulate food intake by overfeeding or underfeeding them.

It's a delicate balancing act, but parents need to trust themselves and their babies, says Ellyn Satter, a registered dietitian, family therapist and author of Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming.

Parents need to pay attention to babies' natural hunger cues and feed them until they don't want any more, she says. "Many babies won't let you overfeed them. Some will clap their lips shut once they've had enough and they won't take another swallow. They'll fight the bottle or the breast."

Other babies will let themselves be fed when they are only moderately interested. The trick for parents is to try to read the child's behavior, Satter says. "It's a matter of trial and error. Essentially you are a detective trying to figure out what the baby is trying to say."

Parents need to be careful not to be too controlling with feeding, she says. Sometimes people whose kids are large or are enthusiastic eaters hesitate to let them eat as much as they want for fear they will get fat. If parents try to restrict their hungry child's intake, there is plenty of evidence that the baby will get fatter, not slimmer, as he or she grows up, she says.

Children need to trust that they'll be fed enough. "It's a profoundly loving and nurturing act to feed a baby. It says to the baby, 'I love you and accept you, and am willing to give you what you need.' It's how a child learns to trust."

Parents must remember this division of responsibility: They are responsible for what their children are offered to eat; the kids are responsible for how much they eat or whether they eat at all, Satter says.

On the other hand, some parents with good intentions make the mistake of trying to push too much food on their children.

Babies will stop eating spontaneously when they are full, "unless someone keeps pumping food into their mouths," says Jamie Calabrese, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' task force on obesity.

Some parents offer their babies a bottle or the breast whenever they cry, but infants cry for reasons other than hunger, says registered dietitian Elizabeth Ward, the mother of three young daughters and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler.

Many kids today are not allowed to rely on their inborn ability to regulate their own food intake, she says. That's especially evident with toddlers and preschoolers who "graze" or snack constantly.

The kids carry bags of crackers, cookies and juice everywhere they go, even in their car seats and strollers. "This is one of my major pet peeves," Ward says. "The kids never get a chance to feel hunger."

It's best if parents offer regular meals and sit-down snacks with nutritious foods, she says. The best snacks are foods that you would give your child at a meal: a sandwich, fruit or milk, she says. The problem with many typical snack foods -- cookies, chips, crackers -- is that they crowd out more nutritious foods that kids need, she says.

Ward believes one reason parents offer their kids so much food is they are afraid their children aren't getting enough nutrients. "But if they offer them the healthiest foods possible every time they eat, then there is a greater chance they'll meet their nutrient needs."

Satter suggests offering some of the "forbidden" foods such as chips, cookies and sodas occasionally at meals so children don't sneak around and overeat them.

Parents have to rethink their attitudes toward food when they have a child, Ward says. "I encourage parents to closely examine their own eating habits before a child is born because they have influence on the way the child will eat. And it's really hard to unlearn habits that you learn early in life."

To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com

© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.