family health

Drs Roberts and Heyman have struck the right balance of solid medical facts and personal experience with their own children in Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health. And balance is just what we need on this topic! I've found other child nutrition books to be heavy-handed, with agendas that are not always about doing what's right for your child and without much scientific backup. This book provides realistic strategies for dealing with an often-difficult and emotional issue - without the guilt! My own experience with my two-year old daughter tells me that they are dispensing very sensible advice. My daughter is a healthy and adventurous eater. It makes life so much easier when mealtime is a pleasure, not a battle. The two points I found to be most helpful: 1) if you don't want them to have it, don't keep it in the house; and 2) whatever a child eats within the first 2 years of life is what they come to know as "safe" or acceptable foods, so variety is key in that time-frame. I hope many, many parents read and benefit from this book.

I found the information in this book well organized and clearly focused on how to develop good lifelong eating habits in children. This book provides the kind of comprehensive information on growth and nutrition that you are unable to get in short, well child checks at the pediatricians' office. As a mother of an infant and a toddler the book provided clear advice on how to direct better food choices for my toddler and avoid repeating many of the same feeding problems with my infant. I recomend it for anyway who is concerned with developing healthy and life long eating habits in their children and family.

Of all the books I have read on feeding babies, toddlers, and children, I find this the most realistic and most the clearly based in scientific research.

It's clearly written and well organized, and doesn't recommend any strange foods you wouldn't put on the table for guests or tuck into yourself.

That said, I was disappointed at the authors recommendation to start kids on refined breads and crackers because 'they don't need the extra fiber' -- along side the suggestion that you not start your child out on anything you don't want them to prefer. It seems contradictory to me, and my little guy is getting whole grains only. I was also disappointed at the author's lack of knowledge about breastfeeding. In the parts of the book that deal with slightly older children, they have some misleading and out of date information that discounts the benefits of extended breastfeeding and overstates the benefits of cows milk and artificial baby milks.

But, even so, I must say that they have some extremely wise and useful information about how children think about and respond to food and some excellent advice for how to raise a child with a good relationship to food -- it's balanced (an occasional piece of candy at a friend's house or a packet of chips after swim class won't kill most children) but weighted in favor of whole foods and higher nutrition.

Just what I was looking for!