Babies fed on demand do better

Parenting debates about how to parent your child will always go on and in my option do nothing but confuse parents and put unnecessary pressure on them. However, more and more research is being conducted which puts to bed a lot of these parenting debates, which is great as it allows parents to get on with what they need to do – parent.

The latest debate put to bed is whether to keep a feeding schedule for your baby or whether to demand feed. Researchers from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex and Oxford University conducted a study with over 10,000 children whose IQ was tested several times up to the age of 14.

What they found was demand fed babies did better academically with a 4 to 5 higher IQ score than babies feed with a schedule. However, before you jump on in, I have a little warning, the study also show that demand fed mothers were left more tired and grumpy!

The following video is from the Raising Children website (www.raisingchildren.net.au), created by Australian child experts. The video gives you an idea of typical feeding stages babies go through.