Conclusion
Our findings provide insights into mother-child interaction during the complementary feeding as well as the common constraints that make it difficult to adopt the recommended practices among mothers in rural Muhanga District. Most mothers reported to verbally encourage the children to eat during feeding. During the observation, mothers rarely provided verbal encouragement during feeding and rarely allowed children to self-feed. The study also revealed that factors such as the burden of other responsibilities and poverty were perceived as barriers to implement the responsive feeding practices (for mother-child interaction during feeding).Therefore, interventions strategies to improve child nutrition should address constraints to the issue of how to feed the child in addition to and above what is fed to the child only.
Recommendations:
The findings from this study have a number of implications for future nutrition interventions that optimize child development through responsive feeding.