“Here Comes the Plane…”

An infant’s mealtime is typically another chore. The pimply big brother whines about his poor grade in Algebra, the mother-in-law who is incapable of living by herself is questioning which pills she’s supposed to take today, and the boss is calling to give you more spreadsheets to fill out before tomorrow. The infant begins to pout. You try to feed him, but he closes his mouth and turns away. “Here comes the plane…” Access denied. You check his diaper; it’s clean. You check under the table to see if the new puppy is snapping at his toes again; nothing. What, then, is the matter? A team of psychologists from the journal Behavior Modification believes they’ve begun to uncover the answer.

The article, entitled “Descriptive Analysis of Pediatric Food Refusal: The Structure of Parental Attention,” argues that the behavior of the parent feeding the infant has a marked effect on the whether or not the infant cooperates. In the daily droning duration of our lives, it is sometimes easy to take a crying, snot-dripping, babbling baby for granted. We, either consciously or unconsciously, conclude that since he doesn’t understand much yet, how we behave around him hardly makes a difference. He can sit on our lap and watch a rated R film and it’ll all go over his head. We can let a cuss word slip and he’ll continue playing with his building blocks. But as it turns out, our behavior, at least when it comes to convincing our young children to open his mouth for a spoon full of green baby food, does matter.

To prove this, the team of psychologist incorporated the good ole fashioned scientific method. They hypothesized that perhaps paying more attention to an infant during mealtime would make for more appropriate feeding behavior. Next, they designed an experiment using twenty-five volunteer mothers and their infants. Mothers displayed various forms of parental attention during mealtime. Some never made eye contact; some smiled and focused their attention completely on feeding. Occurrences of appropriate and inappropriate mealtime behaviors were then recorded in response to these differing maternal feeding behaviors. Once the data was collected, the team was able to cross-examine the observations and attempt to determine any significant increases or decreases in infant cooperativeness resulting from the mothers’ behaviors.

The results showed that increasing maternal attention was frequently followed by temporary decreases in inappropriate mealtime behavior and increases in bite acceptance. Moreover, various forms of maternal attention resulted in statistically significant changes in child behavior, which supported the clinical utility of the data. Of course, follow up experiments will need to be done to ensure that all variables are accounted for, but these results yield remarkably consistent input.

So no, it’s not because the green-pea pudding tastes bad, per say. At least part of the problem, so it appears, is the chore-like mentality with which the infant is being fed. The noise and scatter-brained distractions are too much for him to handle, and maybe a little tender loving care would calm him down.