What's Eating Your Child by Kelly Dorfman is a great tool to use for your child's nutritional needs and mysteries.
I have found many solutions to my daughter's tummy aches, back aches, lack of attention, attitudes...I definitely think this book is a must in your home.
Excerpt from What's Eating My Child?
from Chapter 1: How Important Is Nutrition, Really?
Few parents start out with the goal of feeding their children toaster pastries for breakfast and peanut butter crackers for lunch, yet an astonishing number (if my practice is any indication) end up there. How many exactly? Hard to say, because so many of them are hiding in shame. These are not uneducated people. They are doctors, lawyers, and professionals. One high-powered executive with a master's degree in business came to speak to me about her son whose diet consisted almost entirely of candy bars and pretzels. He was, no surprise, not functioning in school or at home, and the many medications they had tried were not working. She felt so guilty and was so defensive that I could not find a neutral area where we could have a conversation about how to help him. She heard every suggestion, no matter how mild, as a referendum on her mothering skills. "He won't do it!" she insisted. "I have tried."The scenario of a typical diet gone bad starts at age two when a sleep-starved mother hands her red-faced, screaming toddler a cracker or cookie so he will just shut up. The action is not seen as a long-term solution but a rare treat for a bad day. But little crackers and cookies work like a charm for toddlers. They melt in the mouth, can be held in the hand (for maximum control)—they are like toddler crack. The baby is happy! He stopped fussing at church. At Grandma's birthday party everyone remarked on how well behaved he was.
Yes, he refused to eat lunch, but that was a special occasion, and aren't all toddlers picky? No, they are not. If you give them only the good food you want them to eat, they will eat good food. However, once salty or sweet food is introduced and the child is at an age when it's developmentally appropriate to assume some control over what he puts in his mouth, then a bad habit will unwittingly begin, and things will go downhill from there. If the snack food is in the house, the child quickly learns that he can refuse dinner and scream until the preferred food appears. Few of us have the energy or patience at six-thirty at night to deal with a hysterical child. Besides, the rest of the family is trying to eat dinner, and isn't it better for the baby to eat something—even if it is junky—than nothing? A good mother does not let her child go hungry, right?
The final mental argument is that fighting about food causes eating disorders. Isn't this back-and-forth arguing about what to eat harmful to a child? This is how good moms and dads, under the guise of not let- ting their child go hungry and avoiding food fights, lay the foundation for bad eating. The two-year-old, under the chemical influence of highly flavored food and heady with new-found personal power, self-selects his own diet from this time forward.
Radical solution: Don't have anything in the house you do not want your child to eat.
Fascinating Fact
The picky eating epidemic may be reducing children’s capacity to learn. Forty percent of the diet of American children is made up of empty-calorie foods. A study of twins found the fussy eaters tended to have lower IQs then their sibling who ate better.\You can learn so much from this book, What's Eating Your Child. I have already read through my copy and learned so much about my children's diets!!! You can pick up your paperback copy from this link, http://www.workman.com/products/9780761161196/ at Workman for only $13.95(US).
*This was not a paid review. I received this book for free in exchange for my review. Thank you to the sponsors for providing this item.*
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