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Real talk though…
Here’s the best way to make a child eat: don’t.
Adults get to decide for food: what, when and where.
Children get to decide: if, and how much, and which parts.
Respect the choices and they’ll start taking responsibility for the choices. Encourage and support and then back off.
This is what I did with my kid… after the divorce. Before the divorce she did the “stay at the table till you’ve cleared the plate”, etc.
I wasn’t raised that way, and I didn’t agree with it, but she insisted.
I’m glad I got divorced, it was such a relief. I’m probably not supposed to admit that out loud, but it’s true. To be clear, this wasn’t the reason we got divorced, it just irked me.
This is the best baseline or starting point, but in practice it’s never that simple. There’s so much intertwined with the whole thing that there just aren’t simple answers for every child or family.
I feel like this happened to my kid by accident. We always try new foods, especially international food, and I’ve always been very honest. I’m a picky eater, I have him try things but he has no obligation to eat it, or even like it. Rule is we only take what we think we’ll eat, even if we’re starving, we get a little, eat it and get seconds instead of possibly wasting it.
Even with items like donuts, we cut them in half or quarters, this way we don’t waste and can try multiple flavors. I let him know if things are spicy or not, or we find out together. I’ve never steered him wrong in that regard and he knows I don’t fuck around with food. He’s a great kid and am lucky to have such a person.
We watch our cousins take large portions, take a bite or two and essentially trash it saying they’re full. We don’t pull that bullshit. Fucker will take the last Boston cream donut and throw it away.
But Boston Creams are AMAZING!!!
Wastage is a problem. My way around that is to put very little food in for myself. If the kids don’t finish their food then I eat it. If they do finish their food then I go for seconds of the normal grown up food. Sometimes it turns into an insane meal of spicy curry and rice, 2 fish fingers from one kid and the other kid’s bland pasta and veg… but I’m ok with eating random stuff like that for my dinner. I think this keeps us to being a pretty low waste house despite the kids.
Yeah I do similar with eating his. It drives me nuts watching the cousins throw shit away, literally 1 bite out of a sandwich.
I can’t fill one wheelie bin with trash in 2 weeks. My cousin and his 3 kids would fill 2 wheelie bins with trash every single week. The amount of food thrown straight into the bin astounded me.
Absolutely. Also, forcing your child to eat or sit at the table all night is abuse.
My mom had us eat by making food an exciting event. We often had new foods, got to try new things, and overall made it very game like. “Tonight we’re going to try Swiss chard! I’m so excited! I wonder if it will be good or yucky?”
And then also told us that taste buds change all the time, and that by 7 years every taste bud has changed out. So two things that taught us: you will like different things as you age, sometimes disliking things you used to enjoy, sometimes loving things you used to hate. And that you never know when that individual taste bud will change that makes you suddenly like a new thing. So try stuff often and you’ll end up enjoying new things.
As a result, we were the only 5 year olds in our neighborhood that fucking loved liver and onions
Best advice I got about parenting wasn’teven about parenting necessarily, it was about interacting with other adults. I got it shortly before I became a parent myself: “Listen to advice, but understand everyone is full of shit”
People love to speak in absolutes. Nobody speaks about adults like they’re a simple 1+1=2 equation but will absolutely insist children are that simple.
Which is frankly insane. Its the opposite. Culture homogonizes us, adults are much simpler than children, they’ve spent a lifetime being battered into a societal mould. Kids are still exactly themselves.
I’m really glad I got that advice, or reading through these miserable catty comments from people who clearly have all the answers would be really harmful.
If it’s something new, stolen food is best food. Have something different yourself and let them try some from your plate. There’s no expectation that they have to eat more, if they don’t like it.
If it’s something they chose then they have a choice to eat it or not. It doesn’t get replaced however.
If it’s something you chose, then that’s more on you. As soon as my minion was talking, she started getting a say in what she wanted. Even if it did mean a mixed bowl of peas and sweetcorn became a staple for a while.
Is this about teaching your kid to ignore their feeling of hunger so they overeat and loose the feeling of satisfaction? Maybe don’t?
Little kids often don’t eat until they’re full, lots of kids might sit down eat four bites of food say I’m done, run off to go do something less boring then in half an hour be in tears they’re so hungry, at least this was my youngest child and she’s definitely not alone. It’s about knowing how much your child has eaten that day and how active they are with balancing their body’s need for fuel and their hunger drive. My son played tag football when he was 8, he would not eat enough on his own, get low blood sugar and feel very sick, I wasn’t teaching him to overeat, I was teaching him to consider his lifestyle and choose healthy food options to make sure he could do things he wanted.
Kids aren’t like adults, they do need guidance on basically everything. Forcing your kid to be in the clean plate club for every meal no matter what is a far cry from encouraging a child to appropriately fuel their body.
I just made what I wanted and let them eat or not - little kids don’t really need much food, not as much as adults think. Something like 3TBSP 3 times a day! And if they are not eating enough, and wanting junky stuff I made nothing sweet for a week or two to reset their palate.
And offered a lot of different flavors early, to help develop a palate. Olives, fruits & veg, spices, textures, variety.
But none of mine were really picky. Just sometimes stubborn to exercise their will, or because they thought to hold out for dessert foods. I can go months without sweets, child. You will get hungry long before I want anything sweet.
ETA - fake choices can sometimes work too. “Do you want carrot for your vegetable, or broccoli?” And when older I would sometimes ask them to make supper and we would buy whatever ingredients so they could make what they wanted, and the rest of us would eat whatever they made. Often, macaroni and cheese but sometimes they surprised me with lentil salad or something else healthy. But I was eating disordered as a young woman (restrictive - obsessed with calories) and I don’t want them to be like that, it’s not actually good to be that obsessive about perfect diet.
Don’t fight about what goes in or comes out. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
How come you’re always such a fussy young man?
Don’t want no captain crunch, don’t want no Raisin Bran…
Well don’t yah know that other kids are starving in Japan…
its pure attention seeking behavior. if the child complies, it is no longer the center of attention. try some actual parenting.
Ah yes, teaching your child not to trust you with information about what they can do. Classic!
I feel like a lot of people start from a conclusion and work backwards to find the justification.
Many Lemmites don’t have the knowledge from previous social interactions to think in any other way.
. . .
what?
Child does not want to eat more -> parent asks child to eat one more bite -> child says they can eat two bites -> parent asks child to eat two bites -> child learns to only tell parent they can eat two bites if they want to deal with a parent asking them to eat two bites -> child learns to only tell parent they can do X if they want to deal with being asked to do X -> child learns to only tell parent what they can do if they can deal with being asked to do it -> child learns to only tell parent things if the parent will handle it in a way that helps them.
To be fair, this is a good life lesson to learn with employers, cops, judges, inspectors, teachers and other unilateral authorities, but it would be nice if a child can trust their parents with anything.
