Your Childs Weight Helping without Harming
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Your Childs Weight Helping without Harming
As much about parenting as feeding, this latest release from renowned childhood feeding expert Ellyn Satter considers the overweight child issue in a new way. Combining scientific research with inspiring anecdotes from her decades of clinical practice, Satter challenges the conventional belief that parents must get overweight children to eat less and exercise more. In the long run, she says, making them go hungry and forcing them to be active makes children preoccupied with food, prone to overeating, turned off to activity, and likely to gain too much weight. Trust is a central theme here: children must be able to trust parents to provide as much food as they need to satisfy their appetites; parents must trust children to eat only as much as they need. Satter provides compelling evidence that, if parents do their jobs with respect to feeding, children are remarkably capable of knowing how much to eat.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars helpful
As the parent of 2 children who have been at the same, albeit high, percentile on the growth curve since infancy, this book is very helpful. Now I see how I can tweak my part of the issue, and help my kids learn how to be who they naturally are, without feeling as if I am failing them.
I really appreciate this book, thank you Ellyn Satter.
4 Stars Revolutionary, though repetitive
I love Ellyn Satter’s healthy attitude toward food and eating. But I did get a bit tired of seeing the magic words “Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility” on page after page. Still, Satter’s ideas are revolutionary enough that maybe she needs to repeat them frequently to get them across. Her basic idea? You are responsible for presenting your child with nutritious food at regular meal and snack times. You are not responsible for how much your child weighs, you are not responsible for how much (or how little) your child eats, and you shouldn’t even try to prevent your child from ever eating “junk” food. Just as important as Satter’s theory of how to feed a family is her critique of our “fat-phobic” culture. And she’s not just making it up as she goes along–she cites the research to support her theories. This is an important book.
5 Stars Helped dd loose weight without trying -
How much damage did my parents do to me by making me “clean my plate” because “there were children starving in Africa!” Urgh. After 20 years with a weight problem, I’m finally getting it under control (with the help of WW) A few months ago - I realized that dd was heading towards obesity herself - and I was helping her ! After reading this book, incorporating some of the suggestions, she lost 10 lbs over the past 3 months, without even trying. Definately urge an overweight parent to read it before putting a child on “a diet” or otherwise limiting food. So glad I did before I made the same mistakes with my other 3 children!
5 Stars Warding off obesity
I am thankful that we found this book early enough in my daughter’s childhood that we can implement the suggestions and really make a difference in her life. I have struggled with obesity my entire life, and my daughter appears to have inherited my genetic makeup. I learned from this book that many of the things my husband and I were doing WERE harming her and setting her up for full-blown obesity in the future. This book has helped us develop a more relaxed environment around eating, and we now have sit-down family meals for every meal we have at home. That is a key component of the whole philosophy, and even though we knew that was important in the same way that everyone does, we didn’t make it a priority until after reading this book.
5 Stars Life-changing for my whole family
I stumbled on this book while searching for family meal plans. What a revelation. We have one child who we have worried over for years regarding her eating habits and high weight. My husband actually picked up this book and read it cover to cover and, uncharacteristically, led the way in a radical change about how we think about meals and food in our household. This book is full of common sense for families who may be struggling with a child’s weight problem. The basic idea is so ZEN–stop controlling, stop struggling, stop worrying and you change the very nature of the problem. Now we’re no longer trapped in the double standard of telling one kid to stop eating and the other to finish her food. We’re seeing our picky 3 year old actually grab a carrot on his own!! My overeater pushes back from the table when she’s full and doesn’t crouch over her plate like a famished animal. My middle child is learning to sit in her chair and enjoy the food that is available instead of asking for alternate meals. My husband and I actually have time to catch up with the kids. And I have been able to look at my own eating patterns (and their origins) in a new way. This is a profoundly wise book and I’m so grateful to have discovered it.
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