mealtime solutions for your baby, toddler, and preschooler: Excerpts from the Introduction to Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler

Introduction to Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler by Ann Douglas
(Wiley, 2006)

Odds are your definition of "a memorable meal" has evolved somewhat since you became a parent. Forget the fancy restaurant, candlelight, and romantic music: you're more likely to note the time and date of this milestone moment (or to post a blow-by-blow re-enactment of the meal in question in your blog) if you get through an entire family dinner without a single one of your dining companions (a) threatening to go on a food strike because they hate the menu du jour; (b) taking one bite of their meal and then triumphantly announcing "All done!"; or (c) whining to get down from the dinner table before you've carried your plate to the table. And as for what's showing up on the dinner table these days, chances are there have been some major shifts on that front, too—unless, of course, you were always in the habit of dining on such gourmet fare as strained carrots, alphabet pasta, and fish sticks. Yum!

Food Fantasies, Food Reality Check
Remember what mealtimes were like when you were a kid -- how your annoying little sister used to throw hissy fits every time your mother served any meal that violated one of her dinnertime rules of engagement -- and how she was allowed to get away with it? If your picky little sister was like mine, her food rules probably went something like this: (1) no food shall ever touch any other food; (2) casserole is just a fancy word for disgusting. And, do you also remember swearing that there was no way you would ever let any kid of yours pull that kind of stuff once you became a grownup?

Who knows? Maybe you even managed to carry those "my kid will never be like that" fantasies well into adulthood, smiling smugly to yourself as you dined with other parents and their equally picky offspring, or when you spotted people who clearly should never have been allowed to be parents inflict their unruly brats on other restaurant patrons. And then you became a parent yourself and your children refused to follow your blueprint for mealtime perfection. The baby became high chair phobic, the toddler thought it was a big joke to try to eat your dinner instead of his own, and the preschooler decided she only wanted to eat foods that she had seen advertised on TV. (And, given that your family doesn’t get the Food Channel, so she was picking up her culinary preferences from the Cartoon Channel or the Sci-Fi Channel or some such thing.) How could your visions of doing this food thing right have gone so terribly wrong?

Another Book about Feeding Babies, Toddlers, and Preschoolers?
You’re probably wondering why I decided to chime in with my two cents on the subject of feeding kids. I mean it's not as if there’s exactly a book shortage in this particular publishing category. Pretty much every parenting author, cookbook author, nutritionist, and pediatrician on the planet has ventured into this turf -- and if they haven’t written a book on this subject yet, they're probably being chased down right this second by some publisher waving a book contract. The reason is obvious: parents are hungry for information on what it takes to get kids off to a healthy start nutrition-wise. And given that today's generation of kids are more overweight and less fit than ever before, the stakes have never been greater for this generation of parents or kids.

But, still, that's no excuse for writing another book unless you think you have something unique to add to the discussion. So I had to think long and hard before I agreed to write this book. What would a book in this series bring to the table that would be of unique benefit to parents and their children? What did I have to say that would help other parents grapple with this big-stakes issue. Here’s what I came up with as my reasons for tackling this project, long before I ever sat down to write the first chapter of this book.

• The Mom factor. What has been missing from the bookstore shelves is a book that takes a truly mother-centered approach to the issue of feeding a young child -- a book that both taps into the considerable mother wisdom on this subject (after all, who knows more about feeding babies, toddlers, and preschoolers than moms) and that factors in all the worry and "mother guilt" that is so much a part of this issue for mothers. Just as previous generations of pregnancy books were guilty of overlooking the fact that pregnancy actually had something to do with the mom (e.g., it wasn’t all about "the fetus"), food books have been guilty of losing sight of the mom piece of the feeding puzzle -- of being so focused on solving the child's feeding problem that they've forgotten to consider how breastfeeding problems, food refusal issues, and other feeding concerns affect a mother when feeding is so much a part of how mothers nurture their children. This, of course, ties into the entire childhood obesity issue -- an issue that can have its roots during the early years, and that mothers in particular tend to carry a lot of guilt about. These are important issues that deserve to be examined through the lens of motherhood.

• No one-size-fits-all solution: Rather than pretend that a one-size-fits-all mealtime solution -- or couple of variations on that same theme -- will meet the needs of all parents and all children without taking into account the sometimes complex and messy variables that go into any parenting equation, this book:

- provides you with a crash course in the basics of nutrition and eating during the baby, toddler, and preschooler stages so that you can understand what is happening to your child developmentally and ensure that your "food expectations" of your child are both age appropriate and realistic

- ensures that menu ideas and suggestions reflect both the day-to-day realities of busy parents (i.e., most parents don’t have a personal chef on staff) as well as the typical preschool palate (sorry, you won’t find any recipes for leek, potato, and watercress soup with orzo here)

- gives you the low-down on what specific strategies have been proven to increase the odds that a particular child will end up developing a healthy relationship with food

- summarizes the latest research on food and nutrition so that you have access to the best and most accurate nutrition information that was available as this book was going to print

- includes a smorgasbord of checklists, charts, and other tools that are designed to help you to troubleshoot your child’s eating problems in a low-stress and parent-friendly way

- provides you with an exhaustive list of suggested food and nutrition resources so that you can continue to stay on top of new developments in the exciting and ever-evolving world of food and nutrition

• The no-worry approach: I can’t eliminate all of the worry of being a parent (especially since food-related worries tend to be particularly insidious), but I can ease your mind at least a little by reassuring you that other parents have experienced many of the same "normal" (but crazy-making) eating behaviors in their kids. And because this book contains ideas, tips, strategies, and stories from the more than 240 parents who agreed to be interviewed, it won’t be me talking away throughout this entire book. Not only would that be boring, you’d be getting only my point of view as opposed to the collective wisdom of more than 240 parents of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. (More about that in a minute.)

• And as a bonus—no guilt!: I wish there was an "official guilt-free zone" sticker on the cover that would alert you that I’m not going to do a guilt number on you in this book. No bashing you because you let your child have a piece of chocolate cake on his first birthday -- or because you didn’t. Your parenting choices are your choices. Enough said. It’s my job to provide you with the most accurate, unbiased information I can and to present it in a non-bossy way. That’s the approach that made The Mother of All books series a highly trusted information source for parents, so I’m going to stick with it in The Mother of All Solutions series as well.

So What Is This New Series about Anyway?

The Mother of All Solutions series is the sister series to The Mother of All Books series. Like all siblings, they’ve got some things in common, but there are also some key differences. While the books in The Mother of All Books series are designed to follow each age and stage—The Mother of All Pregnancy Books, The Mother of All Baby Books, The Mother of All Toddler Books, and The Mother of All Parenting Books are each devoted to a particular chapter in your life as a mom or a mom-to-be—the books in The Mother of All Solutions series zero in on a key parenting problem that you may be facing at a particular stage of motherhood. The two kickoff titles in the series—Mealtimes Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler and Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler—focus on two perennial challenges for parents with children under the age of three: encouraging healthy eating habits in young children right from day one and helping your child to become a great sleeper.

If you’ve read the books in The Mother of All Books series, you know how central “mother wisdom” was to the success of that series. We’re carrying on that tradition with The Mother of All Solutions. You can expect that same “real-world” tone and feel to these books: practical tips, ideas, and solutions that can only come from another mom or dad who is dealing with the near-Machiavellian demands of a toddler who is into the third day of a macaroni and cheese food jag.

Caught the “dad”? We’ve got a growing number of dads providing input, too, because their perspective is truly invaluable. When your toddler’s food whims are flip-flopping baby the day or your baby has been crying for three hours straight and no one is getting any sleep, it’s easy for moms and dads to lose sight of the fact that they are playing for the same team. This series tries to bridge that gap by having both moms and dads actively engaged in the dialogue.

Want More Experts? We’ve Got Experts!

Of course, this book wasn’t based on the input from parents alone, although they really were the true experts driving the Mealtime Solutions mothership from start to finish. Not only did I conductive exhaustive research by pouring through all the leading nutrition and pediatric journals and reading thousands of food-related articles from science, parenting, and other magazines and newspapers published over the past 15 years or so (to say nothing of dropping an obscene amount of money in the food books aisle of my favorite bookstore), I also had the manuscript vetted by a panel of experts who were handpicked by me, not only because of their outstanding credentials and real-world experience, but also because they each brought a unique perspective to the technical review panel. You can “meet” the expert reviewers who offered equal measures of encouragement and great technical advice by flipping to the acknowledgments page of this book.

....So, as you can see, Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler is quite unlike any other book about feeding children you may have read. It’s comprehensive, thoroughly researched, fun to read, and based on real-world advice from other moms and dads who’ve done their time at the family dinner table, and who want to pass their best mealtime solution tips along to you. Now, that’s something to raise a glass to, even if that “glass” happens to be a sippy cup that has been dragged through a plate of spaghetti a dozen times. Bon appetit!

- Ann Douglas