Reply to What are your dinner time rules? Advice please

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[quote=Anonymous]I have one picky eater and one "good" eater. The picky one is very small, like 5th percentile for weight (some would say "underweight," but I don't think of her that way).

Most of the time, we make home cooked foods for dinner. We make foods that more or less everyone likes, at least somewhat. We never serve "kids food" like mac n' cheese from a box or chicken nuggets. We have whole grain pasta, roasted chicken, veggies, hamburgers, basmati rice, salmon, pita bread pizzas, sausage, etc. We never offer the kids something different than what is being served for dinner.

From what we've put on the table, the kids pick what they want. Sometimes that means my son (the "good" eater) will eat only rice. We don't sweat it - just enjoy our own meal. We do talk about food some during dinner, but mostly to complement the cook or express some kind of personal enjoyment.

One of the kids is old enough to clear his own plate, so when he's done with dinner, he takes his plate to the kitchen. Then its time for "fruit course" which is usually a choice of 2 or so items. Do you want a banana or some dried apricots? The fruit course is not related at all to what was consumed at dinner. There is no: "eat your veggies so you can have fruit course."

This seems to be working really well for us. Some days our small kid doesn't eat a lot, but she's growing and developing fine. Getting all stressed about her intake would set the stage for what we see as a whole host of other food related problems.

OP, you asked about using time out. I feel like that would be a really bad way to encourage eating. We have used time out during dinner for behavioral issues, but never for food intake issues. (Like time out for putting fingers in the milk cup again or for throwing fork on the floor)[/quote]

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