(no subject)

[the_rck]

Delia's giving us a hard time over meals now. She doesn't want to sit down and eat. We get her in her booster seat and put food on the tray. She'll eat a bite or two and then do what Scott describes as 'throwing a zerk." She smashes her hands down on whatever's on the tray then sweeps it off onto the floor. This is frequently accompanied by an insistent shout of, "Stairs! Stairs!" Scott and I are agreed that she will *not* get to go up and down the stairs right after a zerk. Sadly, I don't think she's making the connection. The fact that the meal generally ends seems to be reward enough.

I'm trying to decide if what we need to do is to make her sit in her chair for a while, say 5 minutes, with her tray empty and no attempts to entertain her. Is 18 months too young to understand that as a response? It can be hard to tell what Delia understands and what she doesn't. The sit in the chair strategy seems sound enough, though.

Comments

[paxnirvana.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is applicable... but she just might not be very hungry, hence the tantrums. And you should probably be wary of using mealtimes as punishments/restrictions as that might create food-related hangups later... but I don't know much about that. Research might help. ^_^;

As to the not hungry comment, it comes from my experience with my son. After the first year, and a few months or so of pretty standard ravenous eating, his eating patterns changed and he went through odd cycles that were likely linked to growth spurts. He'd either eat twice what we thought he would and ask for more, or barely enough to keep us from freaking out that he was starving to death. And it seemed entirely appetite linked and not sulking or anything too. This pattern actually continues to this day to a less marked degree and I can always tell when we're going to be going out and buying larger shoes or longer pants when he starts wolfing down everything in sight... *sweatdrops*

Don't know how helpful that is in your case, but that was our experience. ^^

[the_rck]

I have no objection to her not eating, really. It's the throwing everything on the floor part that I have a real problem with. I'd like her simply to stop eating. She will push food away when it's offered and she doesn't want it, and we respect that. We've also taught her the word 'done' well enough that she recognizes it when we use it.

Also, she's more willing to eat if we have food in the living room or offer it to her when she's not in her chair, so I'm inclined to think it has more to do with wanting freedom to move than with her appetite (except in as much as she's not acting like she's being deprived by abbreviating her meals).

I just want a way to teach her that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to end a meal and leave the table.

Thanks for the advice, though. Possible future food-related problems hadn't occurred to me, and they're definitely something we'll want to consider. Girls especially are so vulnerable to that sort of thing.

[paxnirvana.livejournal.com]

I just want a way to teach her that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to end a meal and leave the table.

Ah, I get it. Manners. Always a toughie, that one... but well worth it. ^_^ Stick with it is my only advice. They go through more and less cooperative phases as well - testing you constantly. It's not mean or anything they're just discovering the limits of their world through their parent's reaction to how they test to build for future actions. Kids react best with structure - but most especially consistent structure - to their lives. Not blind restrictions, but structure in the form of limits that flex and expand as the child develops - some people have a real hard time understanding the difference when I talk about that to them about why my son is so well behaved and theirs is a whiny brat... *glaring figuratively at my sister-in-law and her monster children as I type this*

And oh boy do kids pick up parent's eating issues with frightening ease... but handling it with humor and openness really helps get them over it. I hate green peppers; my husband violently dislikes olives (no allergies, just dislikes) - however, my son LOVES both. This was because we compromised with the kid. He has to TRY everything on his plate at least once (one honest bite, chew, swallow, whole deal - no exceptions). Then he's allowed to have an opinion about it. One bite doesn't usually make a kid gag and wonder of wonders through this process my son has nearly always perfered salad to meat (so much so sometimes that we have to urge him to eat his protein, *sweatdrops*) which often utterly astounds adults who are around him at dinnertime.

[the_rck]

Manners are the heart of it. I want to come up with rules that we can enforce evenly and that won't be really hard on us, the parents, at least not so much so that we're tempted to skimp on enforcement all the time.

I want very much to raise a well-behaved child. I think we can do it or I wouldn't have dared start this whole having a baby thing. But it's by no means a thing requiring no work.

The one bite thing sounds reasonable to me, mostly. We'd have to modify it a little because we already know of one thing that causes Delia pain when it's in her mouth-- Peaches. She loved the taste when we introduced them, but she'd start screaming (while still wanting more) and not stop till we rinsed her mouth out. My mother has a similar problem with beets (she says it's like chewing on tin foil).

I'm hoping we can encourage Delia to like foods we don't. A lot of my "dislikes" are based on problems I have with digesting the food in question, and I hope that Delia won't have those difficulties (she's showing no sign of it yet). Of course, stocking peppers and tomatoes and such when neither my husband nor I eat them isn't something that we even think about doing.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I agree with Paxnirvana that Delia may not be hungry at any given mealtime. I think it's important that you NOT give her the impression she's being punished for refusing to eat...that can lead to very ugly battles of wills (that children almost always win), and children growing up with distorted perceptions of food, and eating disorders. You should make it clear that you're just requiring her to sit at the table with you like a civilized person. If she doesn't want to eat something, she should put it on the high chair tray, rather than throwing it on the floor and screaming. You might want to set a good example for her, sometime when you're not very hungry, explaining that you're sitting at the table and chatting to be friendly.

The idea of keeping her in her high chair and not entertaining her is a good one. Throwing food and toys overboard, and being rude to people, has reasonable consequences of being bored and isolated for a while. However, I think 5 minutes may well be too long for a child her age. Conventional wisdom for punishing little kids with "time out" says that an appropriate time out lasts about 1 minute per year of age...much shorter, they don't appreciate that they're being punished at all; much longer, they get so distracted they don't connect the punishment with the offense. She's bright, and you've been developing her attention span, so maybe 2 minutes.

[the_rck]

A minute or two seems reasonable. What I've been doing right now is not letting her down until I've cleaned things up. But she finds the clean up process entertaining, I think.

Our general policy is that, if she doesn't want to eat something, she doesn't have to. We're trying to encourage her to hand things back to us or to set them aside if she doesn't want them. She's willing to taste things, most of the time, and we figure she's entitled to decide that she doesn't like whatever it is or that she's simply had enough. That's one reason I'm trying to get her to say 'done' and to know what it means-- So that she'll have a definite way to tell us verbally when she's had enough.