Loving to eat is about feelings, and accepting children’s feelings with eating is as important as  accepting any of their other feelings. Yet current research claims there is something wrong with  children who love eating, and that makes them get fat. Associating children’s “avid” eating with  obesity is all the rage and even well-meaning health professionals encourage parents to put on the  brakes. Parents who restrict their child’s eating give up nurturing and become the food police. Children on the receiving end of food restriction feel ashamed and like there is something seriously  wrong with them.  

The risk of letting “avidly” eating children eat as much as they want is declared to be considerable.  A review from Britain of over 1000 studies claims to demonstrate that children have a greater  tendency to become obese when their parents rate them as being eager and enthusiastic about  eating and preoccupied with food. Research from a major university claims one-year-olds who  particularly enjoy eating become fatter as eight-year-olds. 

Every one of those hundreds of studies had an enormous missing piece: They failed to observe the  parent-child feeding relationship. When parents give their enthusiastic eaters both structure with  feeding and autonomy with eating, children eat as much as they need; when either piece is missing,  children become preoccupied with food and eat seemingly without stopping. Parents who follow  the Satter Division of Responsibility in Feeding (sDOR) provide both structure and autonomy.  Parents do the what, when, and where of feeding and trust their child to do the whether and how  much of eating. sDOR has a proven track record with children of all sizes, temperaments, and  eccentric ways with eating.  

Ellyn Satter’s Child of Mine: Nurturing a Confident and Joyful Eater convincingly and reassuringly  emphasizes the importance of allowing children and parents to enjoy food, trust the body’s natural  hunger and fullness cues, and find peace in their decisions.