Developmental Benefits: The Importance of Family-Style Dining

Positive effects of family-style dining on a child’s development.

Small and Large Muscle Development (motor development)

• Encourages children to serve themselves, which develops their eye-hand coordination.
• Encourages coordination of body movement to move chair, sit, and stand from chair.
• Helps children learn manipulation of utensils.

Language/Communication Development

• Promotes the rules of language (how to participate in interactions with language) through listening and participating in conversations.
• Exposes infants and toddlers to a variety of vocabulary.
• Allows participation in adult-child exchanges and the following of directions.
• Promotes peer-to-peer exchanges.

Emotional Development

• Promotes a sense of competence. This is an indicator of infant and toddler emotional development. The child recognizes his or her ability to do things.
• Promotes self-awareness. This is an indicator of infant and toddler emotional development. The child recognizes himself or herself as a person with an identity, wants, needs, interests, likes, and dislikes.
• Encourages impulse control. This is part of a child’s emotional development. Infants early on show signs of controlling some impulses when supported by a care teacher. By 36 months, a toddler has internalized some rules so he or she doesn’t always need as much support when trying to control his or her behavior.

Social Development

• Allows time for conversations about food, the events of the day, the events to come, and things that occurred at home—conversations that can happen by the time children are toddlers.
• Encourages interactions with adults and peers.
• Promotes social identity, an indicator of infant and toddler social development. The child has increasing awareness of his or her relationship to others in the group.

Cognitive Development

• Promotes use of tools and problem solving through manipulation of utensils.
• Promotes imitation, the ability to repeat and practice actions modeled by another.

The Look of Family-Style Dining

• Eat in small groups at child-size table and chairs (adult may use adult-size chair). Care teachers sit with children.
• Realize the smaller the group, the less hectic the meal.
• Eat the same food that is served to children at same time children eat. (This should not be the care teacher’s lunch break.)
• Encourage self-serving, and assist if help is needed. If children are unable to feed themselves, then they are not developmentally ready to serve food to themselves.
• Set tables with serving platters, bowls, and milk pitchers all small enough to be managed by toddlers so they can serve themselves.
• Consider that children enjoy helping to set the table and serving themselves.
• Encourage social interactions and conversation. Talk about the food (temperature, taste, color, shape, size, quantity) and events of the day. Do not make it a “quiz.” Ask open-ended questions, not “yes or no” questions.
• Follow the child’s lead on conversation topics.
• Provide extra help and allow for time for slow eaters.