This positive, practical, and inspirational guide will help parents find spiritual and behavioral solutions to help their kids achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Acclaimed specialist, Dr. Linda Mintle, gives parents the information and encouragement they need to raise happy, healthy kids. As childhood obesity rises to epidemic proportions, every parent is faced with challenges that were not an issue a decade ago. Dr. Mintle addresses the toxic environment that impacts every family-overscheduling, eating on the run, sedentary options instead of active play, even school systems that no longer include physical activity. She then presents real life solutions that have immediate and long-term results for every family.

With breezy charm, therapist and mom Mintle gives encouraging, straightforward advice to parents who want to change their children’s eating habits. This book is chock-full of practical tips: if your child tends to snack too much between meals, store those leftover brownies in a hard-to-reach cabinet, not out on the counter-top in plain view. She also offers advice on healthy activity. These days, kids spend more time in front of the TV or playing on the Internet and less time exercising, so take the televisions out of the children’s bedrooms and organize a neighborhood hoops tournament. Without laying blame or inducing guilt, Mintle suggests that parents need to attend not just to their children, but to their own eating habits as well. If you snack on candy bars all the time, it’s unlikely that your kids will gravitate towards carrots. She also suggests we toss out the magazines that perpetuate myths about body image—they’re not good for our kids, and they’re not good for us! Mintle’s biblical worldview—that’s the “spiritual” in the subtitle—is addressed subtly. Religious parents will appreciate her perspective, but more secular readers will not find Mintle’s religiosity too invasive. Mintle’s essential insight? Helping your child develop a healthy relationship with food now will serve as an example for the rest of life.--The Kirkus Report

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