Getting kids to eat what the family eats – without battles and tantrums is a popular issue with parents. Positive Parenting Solutions offers these 3 strategies to avoid mealtime battles:
Your kids probably believe you hold the power in your family…you call all the shots and make all the decisions. However, the three areas where parents have absolutely no control and children have the all the power are eating, sleeping and peeing/pooping! Try as we might, we can’t MAKE them eat, sleep or potty.
Kids hold the control in these areas and as a result they represent prime opportunities for toddler power struggles. Battles over eating, sleeping or pottying are a child’s way of saying, “Hey, you’re not the boss of me! You can’t MAKE me eat/sleep/potty!”
And he’s right! A parent can’t MAKE a child eat but the parent continues to try! And…the power struggle ensues. After repeated coaxing, reminding, and begging – the child understands that this is a very effective way to exert power over his parents.
The 3 best strategies to end the power struggles over eating are…
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1. Get your toddler involved! Allow your child to have input in planning the family menu for the week – encourage him to select the vegetable or fruit. For each meal, give your child a meaningful role in meal preparation. For young toddlers, it can be as simple as removing grapes from the stem or washing veggies. Older toddlers can contribute to more complex aspects of meal preparation – measuring, stirring, etc. The more your child is involved in the planning and preparation, the more invested he will be in the meal.
2. Make “eating” the CHILD’s problem not YOURS! When toddlers refuse to eat the family meal or have a tantrum about what is served, it usually invokes a response from the parent – either “coaxing” to get the child to “just try it” or a display of frustration or anger. This attention gives the child a huge “power payoff.” Instead, put the child on notice that “you are no longer going to badger him about what he eats.” Let him know that “he is ‘growing up’ and can choose to eat what is served or not – either way, you are fine with it. But – you won’t be serving any other food until the next normally scheduled snack or meal.” This becomes the logical consequence – the child will eat at dinner/lunch – or he will be hungry.
3. STOP any discussion about what he eats, or how much he eats. What he eats – is his problem, not yours. Plan a healthy meal and include at least one healthy item you know he will eat. Don’t ask him to try one bite, don’t encourage him to eat more. If he eats – that’s great. If not – he’ll be hungry. That’s fine too. (Children will not starve by missing one meal – I promise!) Let him know that dinner ends at 6:30 (or whatever time) and remove the plates from the table. (Otherwise, he will try to outlast you hoping that you will provide food that is more to his liking). If he played with his food and didn’t eat – he’ll have an opportunity to try again at the next meal.
If he has a tantrum because “he’s staaaarving” – be totally unconcerned and go about your business. Remember that he gets a “payoff” when you REACT to his tantrum. Remove the payoff by ignoring the tantrum. Remind him that humans can survive for days without food but be sure to drink water because he does need to hydrate! Don’t reward the tantrum with a snack or the behavior will continue the next day and beyond!
Comment below with what has worked well – or not so well – in your family.
Amy McCready is a highly sought-after parenting coach, speaker, consultant and writer. After taking time off from her career to raise her two sons (now ages 13 and 15), she founded Positive Parenting Solutions in 2004 to help educate parents on how to effectively communicate and connect with their children. Through her online parenting courses, live webinars and speaking engagements, Amy has gained widespread attention and has been called upon as an expert by numerous media outlets, including NBC’s TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Rachael Ray Show, Fox & Friends and MSNBC.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My toddler will feed himself with several bites and then wants us to feed him and likes to pick in our plates. I guess it’s fun for him. He will eat very well this way and we kind of okay with it at this time, but at what age we should stop doing it and how? I don’t want to feed him at age 5.
All of this makes so much sense, but it’s so hard to follow through…our problem is with our 9-year-old. We stopped making a big deal out of him not eating. Like you said, it’s his choice not to eat. And he is usually ok with that, until about an hour after dinner and then we get the “I’m STARVING!!” routine. I tend to break down at this point, and suggest some fruit or yogurt…something healthy at least. Otherwise he raids the pantry for chips, cookies, etc. It just bothers me that he will not eat anything we serve for dinner, and that doesn’t seem to be changing. Maybe we really should “close the kitchen” after dinner, and just ignore the whining and complaining until he learns that he has to try to eat something with us if he wants to eat at all. It’s so hard to let your kids go to bed knowing they are hungry!
My three-year-old godson is partially tube-fed, so I have been worrying about how much he eats since he was very little. I (halfheartedly) push consequences, such as, “we will have to do a tube feed if you don’t finish your dinner” (which, this is a fact, when he doesn’t eat enough, he gets a tube feed. not a punishment, just a fact). BUT it is hard to not continually badger him, as I worry about him eating enough (not because he’s a toddler/child, but because he was underweight for so long, and still is on the low end of “normal”).
Also, I only have him two and a half days a week, and I can assure you that his mom has ZERO interest in coordinating efforts. What’s a doting godmother to do?