Exploring the Relationship Between Child Picky Eating and Caregiver Controlling Feeding Practices

• In Event: 3-231 - The Role of Emotion in Early Childhood Eating Behaviors

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Picky eating refers to rejection of familiar and unfamiliar foods and an unusually restricted range of acceptable foods (Taylor, Wernimont, Northstone, & Emmett, 2015). Parents report more use of controlling feeding practices with picky eaters than non-picky eaters (Harris, Fildes, Mallan, & Llewellyn, 2016). Parent use of controlling feeding practices (i.e., pressure, instrumental feeding) may exacerbate child picky eating tendencies (Jansen, de Barse, Jaddoe, Verhulst, Franco, & Tiemeier, 2017) or other child obesogenic eating behaviors (e.g., food responsiveness; Jansen, Williams, Mallan, Nicholson, & Daniels, 2018). Even though picky eating appears to be transient and common with nearly half of all children (46%) demonstrating picky eating tendencies at some point in early childhood, many parents find their child’s picky eating behaviors extremely distressing (Cardona, Tiemeier, Van Hoeken, Tharner, Jaddoe, Hofman, Verhulst, & Hoek, 2015; Trofholz, Schulte, & Berge, 2017).

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether parent distress mediates the relationship between toddler picky eating and parent controlling feeding practices (forceful, restrictive, indulgent, and uninvolved feeding).

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 62 predominantly white (67%), married (81%), mothers (99%) of toddler-age children (12-36 months) completed measures of controlling feeding behaviors, toddler picky eating, and caregiver distress. Controlling feeding behaviors were assessed with the Restrictive (5-item; α =.88), Forceful (4-items, α =.50), Indulgent (6-item; α =.74), and Uninvolved (4-item; α =.80) feeding subscales of the Toddler Feeding Behavior Questionnaire (TFBQ; Hurley et al., 2013). Caregiver distress and toddler picky eating were assessed with the Caregiver Distress (5-item; α =.88) and Toddler Picky Eating (5-items; α =.88) subscales of the Toddler Parent Mealtime Behavior Questionnaire (TPMBQ; Horodynski & Stommel, 2005). Mediation analyses, using SPSS (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY) and the PROCESS custom dialog box (Hayes, 2012) were performed on each toddler feeding practice (forceful, restrictive, indulgent, and uninvolved) with toddler picky eating serving as the independent variable and caregiver distress serving as the proposed mediator.

Results: The mediation analyses showed significant indirect effects of toddler picky eating on forceful feeding (completely standardized b = .36, BCa CI [0.20, 0.55]) and indulgent feeding (completely standardized b = .41, BCa CI [0.22, 0.64]) through caregiver distress. However, there were no indirect effects of toddler picky eating on restrictive (completely standardized b = -.08, BCa CI [-0.31, 0.15]) or uninvolved feeding (completely standardized b = -.02, BCa CI [-0.22, 0.16]) through caregiver distress.

Conclusions: Caregiver distress was a significant mediator in the relationship between toddler picky eating and some caregiver controlling feeding practices (i.e., forceful and indulgent feeding). Generalizability of these results is limited to mostly white mothers, and reliability of the forceful feeding subscale was rather low. Thus, more research is needed to confirm the results of this study in larger, more diverse samples. However, these preliminary results suggest reductions in caregiver distress may prevent overly controlling parent feeding practices of some parents who perceive their children to be picky eaters.

Authors

• Tracey Ledoux, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Matthew B. Cross, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author