Ellyn Satter > Quotes

“Your job as a parent is not to make your child's way smooth, but rather to help her develop inner resources so she can cope.”
― Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

“Wesley remembered his mother as a horrible cook who would load up his plate with food he loathed and insist he eat it all—or else. He did. In the process, Wesley learned to put himself on automatic pilot when he ate. He tuned out his sensations of hunger, fullness, and pleasure—and, as much as he could, his discomfort with feeling stuffed—and simply got the food down. Through no fault of his own, Wesley’s chronic overeating made him fat as a child and fat as an adult. When he grew up, he tried to stop overeating and turned instead to dieting. Over and over, he restricted his food intake and forced his weight down, only to give up the diet and gain the weight back—almost without exception to a higher level.”
― Ellyn Satter, Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook

“If a struggle emerges about eating, a toddler will get so involved in the struggle and so upset that it overwhelms her need to eat. This observation is just as true of struggles about potty training, what to wear, school work, and so on. Throughout your child’s growing-up years, it is important to matter-of-factly set the limits and avoid the emotional fireworks and struggles. Learning to do this with feeding will help you in other areas as well.”
― Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

“impose certain foods, or amounts of food, or feeding schedules. Whenever you impose rigid expectations, feeding will be distorted.”
― Ellyn Satter, How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much

“A 1956 professional journal article recommended solid foods on the second or third day of life and encouraged omitting the night feeding by age 15 days. After that, the infants were to continue on three meals per day.1 This nutritional underprotection extended to the milk feeding as well, with many professionals recommending infants be shifted at 3 or 4 months from formula or breastmilk to 2 percent milk.”
― Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

“management attitudes and behaviors. Most, if not all, adolescent and adult eating disorders, obsessive”
― Ellyn Satter, How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much

“In brief, it states that parents are responsible for the what, when, and where of feeding, and children are responsible for the how much and whether of eating. At the time, it was revolutionary to insist that children know how much they needed to eat and that all children, even “too thin” or “too fat” children, must be allowed to eat as little or as much as they want.”
― Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense

“is managed can have an enormous impact on the way a child feels about herself and about the world.”
― Ellyn Satter, How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much

“work any better to be overmanaging with a sick child than with a well child. Advances”
― Ellyn Satter, How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much