Reply to How long to make picky eater sit at table and eat?

Forum Index » Elementary School-Aged Kids

Reply to "How long to make picky eater sit at table and eat?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. I do appreciate all of the feedback even when I know we may be a bit firmer than other parents on the feeding issue. Son likes bland food the best. Ours is seasoned. I don't mind not seasoning his food as much but I'm not cooking a different meal every night for him and I'm not giving him nuggets on the side every night. We sit down as a family for 30 minutes to eat. We sit with him an additional 30 minutes after to be in his area while he eats. It takes an additional 30 minutes alone for him to eat it all. It's not that he doesn't like the food, it's just that he likes it a certain way. He doesn't need cheese every time he has broccoli. If we are our of it, he still needs to eat it. He is totally fine with skipping dinner and eating at breakfast but remind you, he gets what he wants at breakfast, which contains sugar.... So at dinner, I expect one balance meal out of the day. He is a healthy and good kid. He will eat 5... Yes 5 slices of pizza at one sitting but takes one hour to eat one broccoli. Not acceptable for us. His portions are super small. Think a half of cup of each, even if that. Always welcomed for seconds or thirds. [/quote]

It seems reasonable, OP, but what do you hope to get out of forcing him to eat? Do you hope that he'll eventually like those foods? Get faster at eating things he doesn't like? Improve his nutrition? Whatever your goal is, maybe there is another way to get there. Sitting for an extra half hour to choke down food you don't like seems like an exercise in parental control, rather than one in nutrition. Even if you don't see it that way, maybe he does?

For me (I'm the other parent of a picky 9 year old boy) I think what it came down to was the idea of bodily integrity, on the one hand (people don't get to tell you what to put in your body, within reason) and to preventing obesity later, which is a problem for both sides of the family. We are trying to keep my kid's own hunger cues alive and talking, and him listening to them, since my husband and I were taught to eat what was put in front of us, not to eat what our bodies were hungry to eat. So when my kid says "I am not hungry," or shows he isn't hungry enough to eat his dinner by toying with it, we take it at face value and he's excused. My kid also gets something he likes for breakfast - a peanut butter shake - so knows he can hold out. But that still means that if he doesn't want his dinner he is going to bed hungry and will just deal with it. Our kids have determination, don't they? Gotta respect that! And I do admire it, and have no desire to break it. If he is that committed to not eating the roasted brussells sprouts...well, more for me!

I will say that we have started watching master chef junior and I bought my kid some cooking gear and he picked some things he wanted to learn to cook and ate some of them. He declined to eat more than a bite of a few things he cooked. It isn't magic, but its helped a bit.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics