Healthy eating habits and a healthy relationship with food and your body are some of the most important life skills you can pass on to your child. It is for this reason that parents use repeated commands, begging, bribery and entreaties at the table so that the child will finally eat broccoli puree or finally try fish. Most of these techniques get the job done, but they make family meals stressful. They increase the risk that unpleasant emotions will provoke hysteria, and add a lot of stress to everyone. Is there a foolproof recipe for teaching children to eat? And what to do if everything goes wrong?

Mealtime conversations are a key element of our interactions with children regarding nutrition. It's the way you guide your eating process that can reduce the number of conflicts around food. Stephenie Meyers suggests that parents use open dialogue instead of coaxing and coercion, which will become a reliable foundation for a child's healthy relationship with food, not only now, but also in the future.

“The ideas presented in this book should help with common problems that confront parents, for example, with situations where children are capricious about dinner, constantly refuse vegetables and tirelessly beg for sweets. I won't give you advice about “involving your kids in food shopping,” “avoiding pressure,” or “making eating a positive experience.” Instead, I'll teach you what to say so you don't have to haggle over food with your kids, no matter who's at the table as a three-year-old or almost a teenager."

Stephanie Myers