Babies whose mothers give them more control over their early attempts at eating solid food appear to do a better job of regulating their own weight, UK researchers have found.

"Feeding in the first year of life necessitates a great deal of parental control given that young infants are incapable of feeding themselves independently, yet the data are compatible with the suggestion that in normal circumstances, infants develop best when given as much autonomy as possible," Dr. Claire Farrow from Keele University in Staffordshire and colleagues write.

Parental attitudes toward a child's eating behavior are known to affect the child's risk of becoming overweight or having feeding problems. For example, children who are pressured to eat or whose food intake is strictly regulated by their parents are less able to regulate their own eating in response to hunger.

But few studies have looked at how parental feeding practices affect weight gain and eating behavior over time, making it difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship.

To investigate, the researchers followed 69 mother-child pairs for the child's first year of life. When the child was six months old, the researchers rated the degree of controlling behavior mothers exhibited while feeding their children solids.

Women were rated on a scale of 1 to 9 from being not controlling at all, meaning they allowed the child to control his or her own eating while supervising, or very controlling, meaning they were "continuously forcing, offering, positioning or distracting the infant to eat."

Among the infants whose mothers were less controlling, those who gained weight slowly from birth to six months packed on the pounds faster from six to 12 months of age, while the infants who gained quickly in the first six months of life gained more slowly from six to 12 months. Both scenarios suggest the infants were able to regulate their own weight gain, the researchers note.

However, babies whose mothers were more controlling showed a steadier weight gain --meaning those who gained weight quickly at first continued to do so, while those with slower weight gain continued to gain weight more slowly.

"Overall, this study suggests that in normal samples of infants, the promotion of infant autonomy in feeding may be advantageous in appropriate regulation of weight during the first year of life," the team concludes.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2006.