Book Review: My Child Won't Eat!

I am very sad that this book is currently out of print. HOWEVER, it is sometimes still available from the La Leche League Bookstore on their website- sorry, my links are still getting eaten alive. You'll have to Google it.

This book could change your life and revolutionize mealtimes in your home. I kid you not! Dr. Gonzalez, a Spanish physician, does a superb job of helping mothers and concerned cooks everywhere understand the strange eating habits of small children.

My FAVORITE part of this book is where he turns a common food myth ON ITS HEAD and backs it up with seriously compelling science. We think, "If my child doesn't eat, (s)he won't grow!"

On the contrary, he explains, children EAT when they are growing. Whoa, there. He explains WHY children may seem to eat nothing, when in reality, they are probably just eating much less than they were last week because they are growing much more slowly this week.

Some days a child without a high calorie demand is just not hungry. A strange concept to me! I've been pregnant or nursing or both every day for the last 8 years (exactly, to the day today :)), so at any given time, day or night, I am hungry. I cannot remember what it feels like *not* to be hungry. All the time.

He explains why cajoling children to eat, eat, eat is counter productive to healthy habits and graceful, enjoyable family/ social meals. He ends the book with a truly brilliant, absolutely hilarious short story that really, really hits home how absurd so many parents obsession with their children's eating habits truly is.

In short, a must-read for parents of picky eaters everyhwere!


"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little."
~John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society

"If hunger is not the problem, then eating is not the solution."
~Author Unknown