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

about vegetables with my preschooler

      Our four-year-old, Kevin, ate very few foods and he especially didn’t eat vegetables! So we tried to get him to eat vegetables and not so many carbohydrates and to eat more if we thought he hadn’t eaten enough and to stop eating when we thought he was eating too much. Every meal was such a hassle that we were about to give up on meals! But since we started going by division of responsibility in feeding we have stress-free meals—and snacks, of course. Kevin is so much happier, and so are we.

       Grady grew slowly

      Grady had always been long and lean, but at his three-year-old checkup his weight had dropped below his usual third percentile and my pediatrician recommended appetite-stimulating medication. That didn’t sound right to me. I asked him to give me 3 months and a referral to a dietitian. She helped me realize I had been putting pressure on Grady to eat and generally not making eating enjoyable for him, and recommended I read Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family. What a relief to realize I only had to be responsible for providing healthy, balanced meals and snacks, and then I let Grady be responsible for eating. Grady gained weight, I shed my stress over food, and now we all eat better.

       I had to let Henry get hungry

      I thought I was following the division of responsibility in feeding, but between meals I let my two-year-old, Henry, eat whenever he wanted to. The food was healthy—I hauled little bags of crackers and juice boxes along so he could eat whenever he felt a hunger pang. Then I learned about the sit-down snack! Henry was no longer a baby who had to be fed on demand. He could last 2 or 3 hours before he had to eat again. At first, he put up a fuss when I stopped giving him food handouts, but before long he got used to having his snacks at certain times. Getting a little hungry before meals makes him eat better. And I no longer have cracker crumbs and juice smears all over the house and car!

       My son has autism

      My seven-year-old son, Gabe, was diagnosed with high-functioning autism when he was three. He has always been a super-cautious eater, first with breastfeeding, then semi-solid foods, and now table food. We are told that he has Sensory Processing Disorder, meaning that he is really sensitive to tastes and textures, and we were told, “stop coddling him and make him eat.” I am not proud of all our begging, pleading, pressuring, forcing, cajoling, and rewarding! But Ellyn Satter reassured me that we could follow the division of responsibility, even with Gabe. So we did. I always put something on the table he usually ate—applesauce, bread and butter—something that went along with the meal and didn’t involve making him his own meal. At first he had tantrums when we wouldn’t make what he wanted, but compared with before, this was easy! Gabe is still a “picky” eater, but he does his part to make mealtime pleasant by settling happily for what I put on the table, even if he isn’t enthusiastic about it.

       Structure is essential

      Your child will eat and grow well if you maintain structure. To provide structure for your child, you have to provide structure for yourself. Have a schedule for sit-down meals and sit-down snacks. Stick to it.

       Structure supports both you and your child

      Structure lets both you and your child know you will be fed. Structure helps you each to eat what and how much your body needs. Don’t wait until hunger drives you to figure out what to eat. You will grab for the first food at hand, and whether you know it or not, you will scare yourself into overeating—and you will scare your child, as well.

       Meals do not have to be a chore or a bore

       Have family-friendly meals. Provide food you enjoy.

       Have sit-down snacks between meals. A planned snack between meals lets you and your child arrive at mealtime hungry and ready to eat. Drinking (except for water) and munching between times spoils meals.

       Avoid feeding struggles. They will spoil your meals. Follow the division of responsibility.

       Make family meals pleasant. Your child wants to be at family meals because you are there.

       Expect your child to contribute. Joining in with family meals is a privilege that your child earns by behaving nicely.

       Be considerate without catering

       Remember whose meal it is. You know more about food than your child does. Your child is growing up to learn to eat the food you eat and to join in with your meals.

       Make only one meal, but include easy-to-eat foods. Include one or two foods that your child—and other eaters—generally eat and can fill up on, such as bread or fruit. Don’t worry if your child eats it and only it meal after meal, day after day. Eventually she will eat something different.

       Include fat. Include fat when you cook, and make it available at mealtime to make food taste good. Fat with food also keeps everyone from getting hungry right away. Your toddler may eat butter as if it were cheese. That’s okay. She needs the calories.

       Trust your child to eat. She wants to eat, she wants to learn to eat the food you eat, and she will tire of even her favorite food and eat something different. Sooner or later (maybe later rather than sooner) she will eat a variety.

       Don’t take it personally. Food is love. But your family’s not eating the food you prepare isn’t the same as not accepting your love. Other family members love you back and eat what they enjoy.

       Drinking and eating on the go

      Keep your feeding goal in mind: Helping your child to be a competent eater, not getting-food-into-your-child right now. It doesn’t matter if the food or drink is nutritious, created especially for children, or even organic. Letting your child slurp and munch on the go will keep him from being a competent eater, and his nutrition will suffer. Just like other children, your child is likely to love eating and drinking wherever, whenever. But if you let him, expect this: He will have trouble knowing how much he needs to eat and may eat too little and grow too slowly or eat too much and grow too fast. He will behave poorly at family