Mealtime

If you have kids under 6, mealtime is quite the hot topic. It can be SO fun (pizza, ice cream, pancakes with sprinkles!!) and SO not. As our boys grow, the ground rules for helping it stay fun are taking shape. Here are a few that have gotten us this far...

1) If you're in the kitchen while I'm cooking, you can sit in a seat. i.e. I've decided not to cook single-handed.
2) You eat what we eat. That usually means breakfast (cereal or oatmeal) and lunch (sandwiches & fruit) are pretty easy. Dinner (casserole or meat with vege/fruit) is the challenge.
3) If you're hungry enough, you'll eat it. I've known several children who spent years with meager food options, and they will eat anything. I'm confident my kids' pickiness is mostly attitude fostered by overabundance.
4) What you see is what you get. Don't hold out for something better. All the elements of the meal are on your plate from the start.
5) You don't get more of anything unless you've eaten everything. I do tend to give them very little of what I know they won't like (i.e. veges). But the rule still helps avoid bargaining.
6) Mealtime is a pleasant time. If you can't contribute to that pleasantness, you can sit in time-out until you can. ("No whining" falls under this umbrella.)
7) We eat dinner together, then the kitchen's closed. I even turn out the lights to emphasize this point. If you didn't eat your dinner, breakfast is gonna taste great!

A couple related notes:
a) I've found that toddlers (at least by 18ms) surprise me with how much they can eat, feed themselves, and follow these rules.
b) The above still apply but with more grace when we're eating somewhere else (esp #5).

A friend of mine whose kids are a little older sent me these gems:

Dinner Rules
1. No getting up from the table until you are excused.
2. In order to get seconds of anything you have to try everything.
3. No loud singing at the table. (You would be surprised what a common problem this was!)

We would go over the rules before we sat down to eat each night using a question and answer format, so the kids were involved:
* What are we here to do? A: Eat
* Are we going to play with our food? No
* Is it okay to sing loudly at the table? No
* Do we ask nicely for seconds/food to be passed? Yes
etc. - whatever needed to be repeated. We still do this at least once a week.

After they seemed to have a handle on those rules, we added that they were not allowed to start eating until everyone was seated at the table. We use saying grace as the cue that eating can begin. (pic from the RenFest)

These really are dinner basics, but we hadn't ever been very deliberate about teaching them before. I guess we thought they would grow into it, but it turned out they needed to be taught. Good Luck! I hope this helps!! It is hard to break the parental habit of bargaining over dinner.

Thanks, Lois!