Feeding with Love and Good Sense:18 Months through 6 Years. Ellyn Satter

She enthusiastically eats with her fingers almost everything that is offered. She loves joining in with family meals. Whew!

       Suddenly, he gets picky. He eats very little, is skeptical of foods that he has eaten many times before, and reacts to the mildest suggestion about food as if you are Attila the Hun (with apologies to all Huns everywhere). Being by now a seasoned observer, you resist the impulse to make special food or try to get him to eat, and correctly interpret this behavior as being natural for a toddler.

       Again suddenly, you sail into quiet waters. After months of skirmishing around food and everything else, your child becomes a preschooler and then a school-age child. She is more willing to try new food and is relaxing to have at family meals. There are pitfalls to come, but you can handle them!

      On the other hand, you, like a lot of other parents, may have fallen into the pitfalls rather than steering around them. You are left with food hassles or a child who eats only a short list of foods. Family meals may be so unpleasant that you consider giving up on them.

      It is not too late! Your child is still very young. If you change your ways with feeding and keep them changed, s/he will be a competent eater and you will enjoy feeding. This booklet tells you how.

1. Raise a healthy child who is a joy to feed

      Focus on how you feed and how your child behaves at mealtime, not on what your child eats. When you maintain the quality of your feeding relationship rather than worrying about what or how much your child eats, your child will eat and grow well and, sooner or later, he will learn to eat almost everything you eat. In the meantime, understand and expect normal child eating behavior. It is normal for your child to be a picky eater, to eat only one or two foods from any meal, to eat a food one time and ignore it another, to eat a lot one time and not much another, and to not eat vegetables.

       You can make up for past feeding mistakes

      If your child is not a competent eater, do not despair. Follow the guidelines in this booklet and all will be well. She is still very young, and when you change your ways with feeding and keep them changed, she will change her ways with eating.

       Your child is a competent eater when . . .

       He feels good about eating. He enjoys food and joins in happily with family meals and snacks.

       He enjoys meals and behaves nicely at mealtime. He feels good about being included in family meals and does his part to make mealtime pleasant. He does not make a fuss.

       He picks and chooses from food you eat with only minor chewing/swallowing/seasoning changes. He is okay with being offered food he has never seen before. He ignores food he does not want and also “sneaks up” on new food and learns to like it. Eventually he will learn to eat almost everything you do.

       He eats as much or as little as he needs. Only he knows how much that is. Trusting him to eat as much he needs lets him grow consistently and develop the body that nature intended for him.

       Do your jobs with feeding and let your child do her jobs with eating

       Follow the division of responsibility. You do the what, when and where of feeding and trust your child to do the how much and whether of eating.

       Trust your child to grow in the way that is right for her.

       Understand your child’s development. Feed—and parent—in the way that is right for each stage.

       Solve feeding problems by applying what you have learned in this booklet.

       Your child will be healthy and grow well

      When you follow the division of responsibility and your child feels good about eating, she will eat as much as she needs, grow in the way that is right for her, and, over time, learn to eat a variety of food. You may feel, however, that it is your job to “get in” nutritious food or get your child to eat a certain amount and grow in a certain way. By comparison, following the division of responsibility may seem like doing nothing at all. In reality, keeping up the day-in-and-day-out of pleasant and rewarding family meals and sit-down snacks is doing a tremendous amount. Parents say that following the division of responsibility works.

       The division of responsibility applies to your special child

      Every child is unusual in some way. The division of responsibility applies to all children and applies to children of all ages, birth through adolescence. The problem is that some children’s characteristics and behaviors make it seem that they can’t be trusted to do their part with eating. They can. With some children more than others, sticking to the division of responsibility demands steady nerves and a leap of faith. Here is help:

       The child who won’t eat family meals.

       The “too-small” child who seemingly doesn’t eat enough.

       The “too-big child” who seemingly eats too much.

       The picky eater.