Synopsis:
A reassuring guide to help parents promote healthy eating habits.
Review:
Superfast Baby has not shown much interest in solid food, so My Child Won’t Eat was really helpful for me. Basically it reassured me that I can trust my instincts that she is getting the nutrition she needs from breastmilk, and that quality (ie, healthy food) is more important than quantity (no force feeding).
I love this book. I honestly wish that more professionals and parents would read it. I’m a LLL Leader who’s encountered a number of parents in the past year who are tearing their hair out because they think their kids aren’t eating enough, aren’t growing fast enough, etc. I truly wish I could sit every one of them down and insist they read this book. Unfortunately, it’s currently out of print in English, and I don’t know when it’s apt to be back in print. Used copies are running around $70 and new ones over $100.
It’s maddening that this book is so unavailable at a time when there are psychologists starting to insist on 4 meals a day only, and doctors are taking slow gaining one year olds off the breast and putting them on pediasure. Parents are complying with these recommendations largely because doctors are putting so much pressure on them to have their children conform to a chart with no deviations. Gonzalez’s book just makes so much sense and addresses the history of child feeding in a way that makes you realize that the godlike pronouncements of doctors have been wrong in the past and may well be wrong now as well.
I’m so glad our pediatrician showed more common sense when our daughter decided at around 15 months that the 1st percentile was where she’d like her weight to be. She stayed there until she was around 10, she’s continued to be a slim person, just not quite so waiflike once she got finished growing. At 13 her pictures look like those of a borderline anorexic, but she actually ate really well, she just had a fast metabolism.
Now if someone could just arrange to do a new English translation of this book and get it back in print it would be helpful. If only I spoke Spanish….
I think one is in the works. I’m an LLL Leader, too, and share your frustration! My older daughter was very slow to eat solid food, was still basically exclusively breastfed at a year, and didn’t eat what anyone would call a meal until she was 15 months old. If it weren’t for LLL and this book I would’ve freaked. Today she’s a sturdy 2.75 year old who loves to eat. When she weaned at 2.5 our grocery bill went through the roof! I have superb breastmilk 🙂