Excerpt from Dealing With Difficult Eaters. Copyright 2009. Of all the myriad childrearing issues that we parents face, getting the required quantities of good grub down the necks of our offspring can sometimes seem disproportionately challenging. Who hasn't, at some point, asked themselves concerned questions about the food their children eat? Questions such as: how many sweets are too many? Can they really survive on so little? And, just how long can it be now before scurvy sets in? While feeding kids does come down to a fairly basic equation of good food + hungry child = healthy child, it's rarely that simple in reality. There are all sorts of reasons why children may not, cannot, or will not eat all the things we would like them to, and nourishing your offspring can be a fraught affair from the word go. Even when you ve managed to establish what the good foods and the bad foods are, you must then strive to interest your little darlings in the former while encouraging moderation in the latter. And there s the rub: kids know how much it means to you that they eat the way you want them to. Which often is why they don t.

It doesn't necessarily get easier with time, either. That unceremonious regurgitation of those early offerings of baby rice and pureed mango is just the start. Even when they're teenagers, and refusing to come to the table altogether because they'd rather just eat microwaved French fries from a box than move an inch away from MySpace, their eating habits are still cause for concern. Truth is, there are some very sound anthropological and psychological reasons for the pressing need to feed we parents feel. Since the dawn of time, we ve been programmed to ensure our children s survival and growth and since those things cannot happen without nourishment, feeding them is automatically on the top of our to-do list. Right from the very start ,moments after they re born and they nestle in for their very first glug of milk, the instinct to nurture and nourish our children is kick-started. You could say it's basic human nature. The desire to get enough food down them and good enough food to ensure their survival is pretty much ingrained in us all.

All of which helps explain why there's something profoundly satisfying for a parent in presiding over a successful mealtime whether a small baby hungrily sucking at boob or bottle, or a pre-teen devouring what s on their plate and then asking for more.