Is Mealtime Miserable? Try This

‘Division of responsibility in feeding’ is an approach that may help picky eaters and food-fixated kids alike. What it won’t do: make anyone finish their broccoli.

The other night, we had ice cream for dessert. My daughters, ages 6 and 2, were very excited because it is freezing outside, so we aren’t eating a lot of ice cream at the moment. Kids don’t care much about seasonal menu planning when rainbow sprinkles might be involved.

When our 2-year-old finished her bowl, she asked for more, and I gave her another scoop. “Are you sure?” my husband said. “Two scoops of ice cream? Is this how we’re supposed to do this feeding thing?”

We’ve been doing “this feeding thing” for six years now, ever since our older daughter was 1 month old and stopped eating completely in response to extreme medical trauma. She was dependent on a feeding tube for the better part of two years, and to wean her off, we had to challenge almost everything we thought we knew about how babies and children should eat.

It was in those early months of panicked late-night research that I stumbled across an approach called the “division of responsibility in feeding” model, developed more than 30 years ago by Ellyn Satter, a dietitian and family therapist.

Division of responsibility, or D.O.R., became the foundation for the way we approached meals with a traumatized child. But, as I’ve learned in the years since, it can also be useful — and even downright liberating — when you’re dealing with typically developing babies starting solids, toddlers who suddenly refuse all green foods and young children with the full range of eating preferences, from picky eaters to the food-fixated.