Reply to After school play date and dinner dilema

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

In that case, I'd allow the visitor to have a say in what's chosen.

I'll also say that you seem to put an incredible amount of effort into making sure your kids eat dinner.  You see veggies and hummus, dinner rolls, and visitors as threats to their eating, and despite depriving them of food for hours before the meal, and letting them choose what they want, you still need to use a combination of bribe and punishment (sitting and watching your sibling eat dessert) to get them to eat.  When are your kids going to learn to decide for themselves how hungry they are, and to regulate their own eating?  
[/quote]

Since I haven't answered this before, the boys are in the same class at school.  Lunch time is from 12:30-1.  At back to school night, parents were told to also send their children with an afternoon snack in case the child got hungry before the school day ended.  I do this for my children.  If my children eat their lunch from 12:30-1 and then eat another snack around 2:30 at school, I don't see why I am depriving them of food if I make them wait until 5pm for dinner.  The boys are 8.  I really don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to go 2.5 hours without food after having consumed a meal and snack.

I don't view sitting at the table until everyone is done as a punishment.  When you are at a restaurant and some one orders dessert and you don't, do you just get up and leave?  Or do you sit at the table and sip your drink and continue the conversation?  And as for dessert being a bribe, I don't deprive my children from it and I don't argue that dessert is a special occassion treat, but if you're too full to eat your dinner, than you're too full to eat anything else.  How can you possibly eat dessert if your stomach is full (therefore you've regulated your own eating).

My children serve themselves.  They take the portions that they feel they can eat.  I do not pre-plate their food.  They make those decisions for themselves.  If my kids are not that hungry and they know they want dessert, they take smaller portions.  [/quote]

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