Grease and tighten: How to Get Kids to the Dinner Table

Nov 2, 2009 by

It’s one thing to cook dinner regularly and sit down to it together at the table daily from the start of your life as a family. It’s another to come under the conviction that it’s something you should have been doing all along, when the children are five, ten or 15 years old.

How can we get kids used to sitting down and eating regular meals at the table when they’ve become accustomed to doing things altogether otherwise? Where do we begin?

There’s a Spanish expression, “engrasa y aprieta,” meaning “to grease and tighten,” that describes the proper attitude for the parent undertaking such a major family overhaul. While you restrict and require, you also make it enjoyable. Both parts are needed.

It’s similar to the way logic and emotion work…

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Top 8 things to cut expenses on so you can spend more on quality groceries

Oct 23, 2009 by

  1. Restaurant meals
  2. Soda
  3. Junky snacks
  4. Cable TV
  5. Movies in the theater
  6. Electronic gadgets and video games
  7. New cars
  8. New clothes

Related post: “Reaching the Promised Land: Home Style or Restaurant” Style? https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2009/09/28/reaching-the-promised-land-home-style-or-restaurant-style/

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The Five Steps to Removing Food Resistance

Dec 19, 2008 by

 

1.      Show no interest in what a child eats or how much.  Offer food neutrally. You do not have to be sincere, but you do have to be convincing.  

 2.      Instead, be confident and pleasant at the table.

3.      Present the best and widest variety of Real Foods, in the most delicious and enticing manner in your power, consistently.

4.      Do not make available foods you do not want your child to eat, but avoid turning it into a power struggle. Distract them with more interesting things.

5.      Count on the combination of your child’s hunger and delicious foods needed by the body, and only that, to eventually…

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The Perils of Monday Meatloaf: A Recipe for Disaster

Dec 15, 2008 by

Janet makes meatloaf every Monday. Every Tuesday it’s spaghetti. And so on and so forth. Ad nauseum. It’s no wonder she doesn’t enjoy grocery shopping, making dinner, or eating it, either, truth be told. It’s just a job. Just think how her children feel.

“The wise mother does not say, ‘I always give my children so and so,’” wrote educational reformer Charlotte Mason. “They should not have anything ‘always’; every meal should have some little surprise.”

Too little variety in the diet week after week makes for a child who is “inadequately nourished, simply because he is tired of it,” according to Mason. 

One study indicates that at least to some degree, food is only good for you if you enjoy it. (https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2008/12/06/it-doesnt-matter-if-she-likes-brocoli-as-long-as-she-eats-it-or-does-it/).

Enjoyment of…

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