With NURTURE: How to Raise Kids Who Love Food, Their Bodies, and Themselves, nutrition therapist Heidi Schauster provides an essential guide for parents seeking advice for their children and food. Drawing on her nearly three decades of clinical experience, Schauster offers readers practical wisdom, compassionate guidance, and, most importantly, some actionable steps to help navigate the many challenges of feeding our children in a world where mixed messages regarding food and body image abound.

NURTURE opens with a thoughtful and relatable introduction (“Prevention and Compassion for Parents”), where Schauster shares her motivation for writing the book: “This book is not just for families that have been plagued by eating disorders or challenges around body shame and dissatisfaction. It’s also for those who want to keep these from occurring in the young people they care about.” From there, Schauster addresses the pervasive diet culture and unrealistic beauty standards that can undermine children’s well-being, reminding us that “all bodies are good and acceptable and unique.”

Utilizing a step-by-step format, NURTURE provides the tools to counteract these harmful influences. The beauty of Schauster’s approach is her consistent emphasis on natural, holistic methods and solutions that have nothing to do with fads (you’ll find no mention of prescription injections here). The real magic, however, lies in the way Schauster transforms otherwise counterintuitive concepts into obvious and easily understood truths. For instance, Step 4 focuses on reinforcing self-regulation and encouraging kids’ autonomy around eating. As Schauster wisely notes, “Every time we tell our kids what to eat or coerce them into eating something in particular (veggies before dessert, more of this, less of that), we override their innate capacity to make decisions about food and learn to self-regulate.”

Throughout the book, Schauster takes every opportunity to ground her advice in scientific research, concluding each chapter with a list of “references and resources.” She also leans heavily on personal stories from her own parenting journey, lending authenticity and credibility to every page. Schauster’s anecdotes are often poignant and always instructive, such as when she unintentionally pushed food on her own daughters and the powerful lesson she learned as a result.

Ultimately, NURTURE offers parents a comprehensive roadmap to raising emotionally resilient children in our appearance-obsessed culture. Schauster covers a wide range of topics, from the importance of encouraging movement and physical activity (Step 6) to the value of teaching kids that “feelings are safe” (Step 9). Most importantly, she reminds readers that “good food is indeed self-care, but it is only one source of self-care. We need care in so many ways.”

Insightful, well-researched, and deeply empathetic, Heidi Schauster’s NURTURE:How to Raise Kids Who Love Food, Their Bodies, and Themselves is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to develop a healthy relationship with food and body image in their children.

~James Weiskittel for IndieReader