Weekend Reading

I'm having trouble getting started writing today. I keep wondering how my friends are doing. And so, as I try to distract myself with talk of my own thoughts and my petty problems, every second thought is of them and their pre-schooler who will have to try to understand why he has yet another little brother with whom he will never get to play.

And on with my trivial blathering.

I got two new books this weekend. I'm reading both at the same time as I sometimes do with nonfiction, and both are turning out to be good purchases. I'll talk about the second one in a subsequent post, but the first book is about kids and eating.

It was recommended to me about a year ago by a psychologist whom I was seeing then and who specializes in eating disorders. One day, in a weepy panic, I spewed forth to her all my insecurities about feeding my kids, all my fears that I would make the same mistakes my parents made or, worse, make brand new, more hideous mistakes since I sort of knew what not to do but had no idea what I should be doing instead. She asked me what I was doing, how I was feeding my kids. I confessed that I was following the book Preventing Childhood Eating Problems by Hirschmann and Zaphiropoulos, expecting that she would gasp and call Child Protective Services since the methods suggested by the authors go against current Food Police "wisdom." Instead, she was pleased, saying that book is one of the two that people in her field most often recommend. The other one, she said, might be worth looking into as well.

The basic difference, she said, was that Preventing Childhood Eating Problems says children should control what, when, and how much they eat, which is a great philosophy and works just fine except that it often makes parents feel like short-order cooks. She said the other one, How to Get Your Kid to Eat . . . But Not Too Much by Ellyn Satter, says basically that parents should control what and when their children eat, but that children should control whether or how much.

At the time, I felt very defensive about the "not too much" part of the title. I was afraid it would be a starvation diet disguised as a parenting book. So I didn't read it. Recently, however, now that my kids are both old enough to express their food preferences, I have indeed felt like a short-order cook and fear that I might not be organized and motivated enough to take the steps suggested in Preventing Childhood Eating Problems to alleviate the food preparation pressure I'm feeling. So I got a copy of How to Get Your Kid to Eat. The verdict is that both books are excellent.

Both books -- and listen up, all you fat-phobic, food policing people out there who give judgmental stares to the parents who dare to allow their chubby kid seconds or thirds -- both books agree that it is a very bad idea to restrict the amount of food a child eats, even if the child is "obese." The authors of both books truly understand what happens when children are put on diets or even when they are made to feel ashamed of their eating and/or desire to eat. They understand that the consequences of doing those things are far worse than some excess weight.

And so, I breathe a sigh of relief. I got up the courage to read both books and haven't found one ounce of fat-bashing in either one.

My fear, however, is for all the children out there today whose parents are terrified of making fat kids and who will, as a result, withhold food and pass judgment. It is my prediction that eating disorders will be much more prevalent, and will begin in much younger children, in the years to come until this fat hysteria is finally over.