Your school-age child is full of contradictions. She wants to master all things - including eating, but she is still a child, and is entitled to be free from worry about eating, moving, and weight. She seems independent, but she continues to need the structure and support of regular family meals and structured snacks. Continue to follow a division of responsibility. If you do your jobs with feeding, your child will do hers with eating.

• Arrange for your child to have 3 family-friendly meals a day at set times.
• Let her eat her way-fast or slowly, much or little, some of everything or 1 or 2 foods. Let her have more of any food, even if she hasn't cleaned her plate.
• Make rules, then let her manage her after-school snacks: Right after school and at the table. No munching along with homework or in front of the TV.
• After she learns to go by the snacking rules, let your older school-age child choose her own snack- even if it is high in fat or high in sugar.
• Say no to between-times food and beverage grazing-except for water.

For more about feeding your school-age child (and for research backing up this advice), see Ellyn Satter's Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook, Kelcy Press, 2008. Also see www.EllynSatter.com to purchase books and to review other resources.