Reddit reviews French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters

I read the "French Kids Eat Everything" book and am following its advice: https://www.amazon.com/French-Kids-Eat-Everything-Discovered/dp/006210330X/

We eat on a schedule:
Breakfast: 7-8 am
Morning snack (apples or something light): 10 am
Lunch: 12-1 pm
Afternoon snack: 5pm
Dinner: 7-8 pm

We don't give our kid anything outside of these times, and there are no short orders. Everyone eat the same thing. Our rule is "parent decide what to eat, and kid decides how much to eat." We don't praise our toddler for eating vegetables and we make no comment when he doesn't eat X.

When he doesn't eat something, we don't consider it to be "he doesn't like it." We simply leave it on his plate until the end of the meal (which is when the adults finish eating), and we toss it. The same food might be brought back tomorrow or next week, and it would be offered again.

What we learned is there is no consistency at all. One day he might eat an entire banana or fish sticks are the best, and the very next day he would reject bananas or fish sticks.

He's at the phase (21 months) where he is pushing boundaries and tries to get off the table before the adults finish eating. If he throws a tantrum I take away his food and push his high chair in front of a wall for 2 minutes and bring him back.

Food is not the issue so don't make food the issue, and avoid sugary drinks/snacks that are not fruits/veggies.

Our child eats a much wider variety of food than the kids of all of our friends even though they are all about the same age. He’s also intensely curious at whatever adults are eating. Sometimes if he refuse to try a food, I can simply hide in the corner and eat it without offering him any, and he’ll demand a bite.

Once in a while when we take him to see our friends, when he comes back he’ll emulate other kids by rejecting X food for a few days or rejecting the first food he’s offered to see if he can get a second option. We just ignore him, let him melt down for a while, and offer option 1 again. If he rejects it a few times, we’ll simply say, “Oh well, it’s too bad that you don’t want this, but we don’t have anything else. I guess there is always dinner/breakfast/5pm snack,” then we take it away and leave him hungry for a few hours. He has long learned his lesson and will not leave himself hungry no matter what. He’ll find something acceptable on the table to fill his stomach with, be it peas, broccoli, raviolis, noodles, or chicken.

> Final observation, and this might be the most controversial: I had to learn to be OK with being hungry every once in while. Just because you are hungry doesn't mean you must eat, and it certainly doesn't mean you snack on whatever junk food is around just to get rid of that hunger.

I will say that I realized this when I read French Kids Eat Everything. The teachers told the Mom that the kid needed to learn that it's OK to be hungry in between meals - that just means you will eat more at the next meal, and it will help you to eat better foods instead of sugary snack foods. Hunger in America is really treated as a bad thing, almost in a "I can provide for my family, we are never hungry. Hunger means we are poor" sort of way. Hunger is really demonized in America.

You're not a bad mom!

I'm not a big fan of "Bringing up Bebe", but the book French Kids Eat Everything focuses on what I covet most about French child rearing: their food habits!

A couple of tidbits to start:

1. try to integrate your husband, and your kids into meal planning more. If he can occasionally cook, great. If not, you could still set time as a family to talk about meal planning, etc. Take some the pressure off of yourself! You two can pick some healthy (and simple, tasty) meal options and present them to the kids as "what would you like to try this week?" and give them some input. If it's age appropriate, have them help with some of the tasks involved in the meal - stirring, separating items, getting them out, etc. I think that buy in makes a big difference.
   
   
2. As much as possible, don't battle with your daughter about the veggies. Keep offering them to her in new (but still simple) ways. Kids have to try things upwards of 12+ times before they like them. If she doesn't like it, just say "that's OK, you'll like it next time."
   
   
3. It goes without saying, but no dinner = no dessert. Meals are a progression, so you have to eat one thing to get to the next. If you don't finish your veggie you don't get your main dish. If you don't eat your main dish you don't get dessert, etc.
   
   

>excessive pickiness around food can set you up for issues with weight

This feels so familiar.......

> saying "hey, I'm at my goal weight, time for dessert seven days a week!"

A diet should probably include six months to a whole year of weight maintenance so satiety hormones can get back on track.

So maintaining the weight would be part of the diet.

Maybe that works?

First of all, thank you for asking this question because I had never seen these 2 book recommended so often in this post. And second, I came in to recomendable you this book.French Kids Eat Everyrhing . I “read” the audiobook and it was very insightful and enjoyable.

Read this book https://www.amazon.com/French-Kids-Eat-Everything-Discovered/dp/006210330X It may give you some ideas on both the approach and some recipes

French Kids Eat Everything -- website and book. Very informative, highly recommended reading.