Ellyn Satter

Child of Mine presents a wonderful philosophy for feeding children. My wife and I really bought into it and it guided the way we have fed our children. The author is critical of almost all efforts to try to make kids eat more or to eat less, as she finds them terribly counterproductive, even the cause of life-long feeding problems. She argues that children, especially babies and toddlers, naturally figure out the right amounts of food to eat. Sometimes they eat too much at a meal and show more sometimes they don't eat at all. But over several days it averages out and they get exactly as much as they need. Allowing babies and children make the decisions on how much to eat can remove a great deal of stress from parenting. Parents aren't let off the hook with food, though. To sum up, Parents provide structure by choosing what children eat and when they eat. Parents also eat together with their children, and everyone has the same meal. But the children decide if and how much they eat.

Pardon me while I get all preachy: Not all parenting books actually provide truly useful help. This happened to be the first book that we found information we really could use. Satter has a philosophy that can be applied and it did work for both my children. It's been a blessing. Feeding is just such a huge and stressful thing with babies and toddlers. I've watched my children skip meals, over-stuff themselves, pick at their food and various other things that would drive me crazy. But, we let it slide, and did not put pressure on them. It was nice to be able to relax about this, and we actually got what the author promised - happy mostly-healthy eaters. Common sense I think now, but I didn't think so then.

I usually don't review books I haven't read all the way through, but this is a superb book that I won't finish for awhile. My oldest is four, I'm not ready to read about teenagers eating habits. If you do read it, note that the writing style can get repetitive, and you may want to skim and skip over sections that aren't of interest. show less

How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much probably could have been shortened to a brochure in order to get the main point across, but I’m still very thankful that we have the book in our home library. Hayden is not much of an eater, unless you count bread, fruit, pizza, chicken nuggets and boogers as a well rounded diet. This book has tried to tell me that it will be okay, though. My job is to provide him with food. His job is to decided what and how much to eat. We’re getting there. show more At least he isn’t throwing temper tantrums when solid vegetables are on his plate any more.

While the book doesn’t have all the questions and answers I would like it to have (such as, how do I get my child to eat a vegetable that doesn’t come from a baby jar and what about when the kid asks for seconds of bread at the dinner table but has touched nothing else?) it’s a start at least. I can admit that I don’t look forward to the first time another mother sees that Hayden may have a portion of dessert with his dinner, watches him scarf it down and then ask to be excused. But at least my three-year-old says, after he’s finished eating his carbs, “May I be excused now?” show less

A classic on feeding from infancy through preschool. As a book from 2000, it felt dated in quite a few spots, but I found it to be a mostly-positive and pretty self-aware resource with a lot of useful ways to frame feeding, and very easy to skim.

Her thesis is that stress in the parent and bad eating skills/habits in the child come from the parent putting more work into feeding than the child puts into eating. She suggests the way to success is to divide the task ownership unflinchingly: the show more parent determines the what and when of feeding, and the child determines whether and how much to eat. Crossing those lines leads to dragons. Key to the success of this strategy from both perspectives is regular snacktimes. show less

A very reasonable look at how to feed my child without being an overbearing freak.
The best thing I took from it is: the parent is responsible for the where, when and what of eating and the child is responsible for the whether and how much of eating.
Also, this author says not do do the "you must try a bite of everything" rule that I grew up with.