If your child only picks at his food, he can be trained to be a good eater. That will happen only when you've changed some of your own habits. Your child only accidentally discovered that being a bad eater meant getting lots of rewards from you. But you, as a parent, can easily undo your child's bad eating habits. I recall the case of little Sally Sanders, aged three-and-a-half, who was angrily described by her mother as being, 'the worst eater I've ever seen in my life! I can't get her to eat anything. I'm afraid she's going to grow up sick and weak, that's how little she eats.' 'What do you do when she won't eat her food?' I asked. Her voice showing a very high state of pique, Mrs. Sanders continued resentfully, 'Every time we have a meal, I wind up having a big fight with Sally. I scream and shout a lot at her. She makes me so mad when she won't eat her food. I warn her she needs a good, well-balanced meal to grow up healthy. She's just a stubborn child who won't eat her food. I'm afraid she'll get a bad vitamin deficiency for not eating all the good food I cook for her.' I took a thorough case history. I went into much detail about the family's habits, their routines, their way of getting on together. Sally, I was told, had always been a bad eater. Mother and father agreed that Sally became worse in her eating habits soon after Elizabeth, her nine-month-old baby sister, was born. 'It only makes Sally very angry when I tell her what a wonderful little eater Elizabeth is. Elizabeth is such a wonderful eater I never have any problems with her. Why can't Sally be like Elizabeth?' 'Instead of making mealtime an occasion for pleasure, you've made it into a battle of wills, a struggle for power between you and little Sally', I explained. Meals should be a sort of treat, not a nutritional treatment for your child. For Now, stop being an amateur nutritionist. Give her the sort of food she really enjoys. And give her only very small portions. Don't scold if she doesn't eat everything on her plate. If she's eaten everything and wants more, give her only tiny additional portions. Never insist that she eat everything on her plate. Remain, to the best of your ability calm, unconcerned and indifferent to her habit of slowly picking away at her food. Instead, enjoy your own food, and pay no attention to Sally. Then, after about, say, 30 minutes, very calmly pick up all the plates and other crockery from the table. Mealtime is over. Maybe your child will complain that she hasn't finished yet. Pay her no heed. But do say, for example, 'That's the way it's got to be. We can't stay at the table too long eating. Sorry, if you're still hungry, you'll just have to wait until lunch time, (or whatever the next meal is).' A bad eater in the article refers to who