Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

Are mealtimes a battle? Do you worry if your child eats too much, too little, or is just too picky? In 'Child of Mine', renowned feeding expert Ellyn Satter provides a compassionate and authoritative guide to taking the stress out of feeding. Satter introduces her landmark 'Division of Responsibility' model, a simple yet powerful framework that shows parents how to fulfill their crucial role of providing nutritious food and a positive eating environment, while trusting their child's innate ability to regulate their own intake and grow appropriately. Covering every stage from newborn through toddlerhood, this book dismantles common feeding myths, offers practical guidance on everything from breastfeeding to managing sweets, and reframes feeding not as a chore, but as a joyful and essential aspect of parenting. By following Satter's principles, you can end food struggles, foster a healthy lifelong relationship with food for your child, and regain confidence and peace at the family table.

What it argues

A causal framework explaining how structured, responsive, and developmentally-appropriate parental feeding practices foster a child's innate eating competence, leading to appropriate physical growth and a positive parent-child relationship.

Key ideas it contributes

• Parental Feeding Responsibility — The extent to which a parent consistently and reliably fulfills their role in feeding by deciding the what, when, and where of feeding. This includes planning and preparing nutritious meals, providing regular and structured meals and snacks, and creating a positive mealtime context.
• Respect for Child's Autonomy in Eating — The parent's practice of trusting the child to determine how much to eat and whether to eat from the foods provided. This involves avoiding pressure, restriction, bribes, or any form of coercion related to the quantity or type of food consumed by the child.
• Developmentally Appropriate Feeding — The degree to which parental feeding practices are aligned with the child's developmental stage, including social, emotional, and oral-motor capabilities. This includes feeding an infant on demand based on their cues and providing a toddler with structure and limits.
• Child Eating Competence — The child's collection of positive and effective eating attitudes and behaviors. This includes the ability to self-regulate food intake based on internal hunger and satiety cues, the willingness to try and learn to like new foods, and behaving appropriately during mealtimes.
• Appropriate Physical Growth — The child's process of growing in a predictable and consistent manner along their own genetically determined growth curve for height and weight, rather than conforming to a population average. It reflects a state of being well-nourished without external interference in weight.
• Positive Feeding Relationship — The quality of the parent-child interaction around feeding, characterized by trust, enjoyment, and a lack of conflict. The feeding interaction is a smooth 'conversation' rather than a battle for control.