Customer Reviews

The No-Cry Picky Eater Solution: Gentle Ways to Encourage Your Child to Eat—and Eat Healthy

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Another wonderful resource for parents from Elizabeth Pantley. True to her style, she is encouraging and supporting of parents who are struggling, frustrated, and exhausted with the food battles of our little one.

The No Cry Picky Eater Solution covers two "major" areas - the first, how to ensure your child is getting the nutrition they need (with excellent charts on what this is for various age groups - realistic charts that can actually be implemented), the second area, how to increase your child's repertoire of foods they will actually eat.

For the first point, Eliabeth provides ways to increase the nutritional value in what your child will currently eat by hiding healthy items in currently "acceptable" foods, by slowly transitioning into healthier choices (adding 1/3 whole wheat pasta to the standard box of macaroni and cheese), as well as a whole section of recipes (supplied by various authors) on how to add more nutrition to what you are baking or cooking... including wonderful catchy names for these foods - Lord of the Apple Rings & Pink Potatoes.

To the second point... how to increase what your child will actually eat. Elizabeth provides very helpful information on how children develop their sense of taste, how this is developmental and not established at birth - this leads to a different way to conceptualize what the "battle" is actually about and how to approach it. This area was our biggest challenge in our home... we had done the "sneaky" approach of getting nutrition in our son (now 4) but wanted him to "want" the asparagus and other "healthy choices".

Over the last three weeks, we have implemented and used some of the techniques - in the very large section on Tips, Tricks, & Tactics (nearly 70 pages) and have honestly been surprised at the positive results - tasting foods of different texture, shape, colour as well as using this while on vacation which Elizabeth addresses how eating out with children is another separate challenge. An example she uses in the book is how the grilled cheese sandwich at home looks very different at a restuarant... armed with her suggestions, we tested this theory with our son, ordering the always rejected grilled cheese sandwich from the restuarant and used some of her suggestions and amazingly, he not only tried it, but "chose" that he liked it and ate it.

I highly recommend this book to parents who are exhausted, feel they have given up or are about to, and who just want mealtime to not be approached with anxiety, stress, and fights.

Thank you Elizabeth for another wonderful book that is already producing results in areas we had nearly given up on!!

I love Elizabeth Pantley, but I still felt a little bit of anxiety before opening the book. I braced myself thinking that I was going to read about how I was doing everything wrong in terms of trying to feed my picky eater - I'm not strict enough, I hide veggies in other food, it's all my fault he's so picky, etc.

Instead, the book was comforting to me. It places no blame on the parents and instead chalks picky eating up to biology. It urges flexibility, which was VERY validating for me to read because I know that with my generation kids were frequently forced to sit still and clean their plate, something I never felt was fair. All of the tips in the book are totally reasonable (nothing impossible or even stressful) and they work well for my family.

The book also does recommend "hiding" healthy foods in other foods and includes some recipes that made my mouth water. I haven't tried them yet, but intend to soon.

Pantley's approach is nonjudgmental, helpful, and like her other books - gentle. This might be my favorite of her books.

A great book, no big surprise here: I own (and LOVE) all of her books. Naturally, when this came out I pre-ordered it!

The book is helpful on every single page, don't skip ahead! Some parenting books have all the hints and help in the end, but this one is full of useful information and child-centered reasoning on every page. You'll find portion charts, recipes, and Showing healthy eating habits in young children is essential for their futures, and its our job as the adults in their lives (and kitchens). A big responsibility is easy to tackle when broken down into four ideas. The solution is explained through the Fundamental Four: Attitude, Environment, Amounts, and Rules. I nearly ran out of highlighter ink in the rules section, sometimes I forget to break the rules to ease the stress of mealtime. I could hug this author!

Thank You Elizabeth for writing this book full of fantastic tips to encourage healthy eating habits.
Good, creative recipes too!
We have a pretty good eater but your book brought up some tips and ideas that will work out great for our family.
This book answers alot of questions you might have for the picky-eater in your house! I definitely recommend!

The latest in Elizabeth Pantley's series of books offers practical solutions for picky eaters. My five year old has responded very well to many of the strategies in this book, most especially her suggestion to allow him to serve his own plate. To my surprise, the first time I tried this he chose 8 cooked carrots out of the steamer and proudly ate ALL of them! Quite a difference from the cajoling it took to get him to eat the two we usually put on his plate! If you are looking for an easy to read book with practical tips and solutions for your picky eater, or guidelines to help your youngest children be more accepting of "normal" foods, this would be an excellent purchase. As in all of her books, Elizabeth Pantley offers a gentle approach to guiding parents through parenthood; it's as if you are having a conversation with a very wise, seasoned mom.