Recently, Gracy Young asked: "My son (who, she says, is almost 2) begins to hold the food in his mouth while he is having supper or lunch." She says she can't make him swallow. "What can I do to help him eat?"

Pediatrician Charles Shubin says, in short: Don't help him eat.

Dr. Shubin, director of pediatrics at Mercy FamilyCare, a division of Family Health Centers of Baltimore, suspects that what's going on here is a classic battle over eating. The child doesn't want to eat what he's given, so he holds it in his mouth to resist and get attention. If the mom is pushing the boy to eat -- something many of us feel the need to do -- she should back off and simply provide him healthy foods to eat on a regular basis.

The boy will eat when he's hungry, Shubin says, especially if his parents hold firm in continuing to give him what they're eating, resist the temptation to put out junk food, and recognize that kids eat less regularly than adults. "Step one is to understand is as children pass their first birthday, growth slows by about 50 percent," he told me. "That means there's a significant drop in calorie need. We all notice kids eat more when they're growing. ...They also eat on a different basis. They eat when they're hungry."

If the boy is holding food in his mouth in the meantime, his parents should ignore that -- but one trick Shubin likes, to give him guidance, is for the parents to talk about him to each other, instead of directly to him. For example, they could say to each other: "If David doesn't like what's in his mouth, he doesn't have to swallow it. He can spit it into his napkin." Then, when he does eat nicely, they should praise him for his good behavior, without drawing attention to the bad.