Findings from this study support our hypothesis that maternal feeding behaviors that are highly controlling are associated with more encouragements to eat delivered from the sibling to the index child during mealtimes. Our study is the first to report an association between specific maternal feeding behaviors and encouragements to eat from the sibling during mealtimes. Results from this study are consistent with prior work showing significant associations between the mother's behavior and the behavior of other family members during mealtimes. our study suggests that maternal use of controlling feeding behaviors, such as restriction and pressure to eat, might lead children to use similar behaviors when interacting with their siblings. our study only included lowincome
families recruited from Head Start, and thus our findings
may not be generalizable to families without these characteristics