Find out more about our Academic Medical Centre and efforts in Academic Medicine
Academic Medicine Executive Committee (AM EXCO)
Find out more about what JOAM do to support AM initiatives
Find out more about the Office of Duke-NUS Affairs and Study Trip to Duke Durham
Guidelines, forms, and templates for Academic Medicine.
Focus on responsive feeding from infancy. Watch for your child’s hunger cues such as placing their hands in the mouth, smacking lips, turning when their cheek is touched (rooting), and respond by offering a feed. Stop feeding when your child shows signs of being full. This helps your child to develop clear hunger-satiation cues, and helps parents to learn to respect and respond to the cues.6
Introduce a variety of solid food textures from six months of age. Gradually provide foods from all food groups (i.e. starches, proteins, fruits and vegetables), which match your child’s developmental age. This helps your child to develop feeding skills (e.g. chewing, self-feeding with fingers or utensils) and to accept different textures and flavours.
Establish routines and structures such as eating at fixed timings, sitting at the table, avoiding screen time or toys as distractions, and having meals together to facilitate positive social experiences around food.
Children learn best from watching others eat. Have family mealtimes together and gradually introduce adult foods. Help your child during the meal (e.g. cut up adult foods to smaller pieces and provide a spoon with pre-scooped food to facilitate self-feeding).
Help your child to form positive experiences during mealtimes by involving them in meal preparation activities such as washing vegetables or setting the table.
Model good feeding practices such as eating a balanced diet, trying unfamiliar foods and putting away the phone during mealtimes. Allow your child to self-feed and present food in visually appealing ways (e.g. different colours or shapes, using attractive utensils). Have a conversation around your child’s day instead of over-focusing on food.
Promote appetite by limiting access to snacks, high-energy foods and milk two hours before mealtime3, to help your child recognise their own hunger satiation cues. Children may eat more and be more willing to try new foods when they feel hungry.
Set realistic expectations of a child’s portion size3. For a children aged one to two years, usual portions are a fifth to a quarter of an adult meal; for children aged three to six years, this would be a third to half of an adult portion. Similar to adults, there can be variability in your child’s appetite, food preferences and intake from day to day – they may eat well on certain days and at other times, eat less. It is acceptable should your child still grow well, and eat a variety of starches, proteins, fruits and vegetables.
Continue to offer your child a variety of foods, both preferred and non-preferred, at every mealtime. As your child’s sense of autonomy grows, involve them in making deciding some meal aspects such as the type of spread on a sandwich.
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