Not in the top five: my own favorite blog post

Jan 4, 2011 by

Happy New Year, as we start 2011 helping you improve your child’s diet and appetite together!  Let me know how I can help you.

The top five Sacred Appetite reader favorite blog posts this year don’t even include my personal favorite: How to Get Kids to Eat at the Table, Part III. It comes in response to a reader’s question about how to get her kids to quit dawdling at the table. I think it’s underrated. It sums up well a key idea that I’ve formulated this year: instead of ever pushing food on kids, look for ways to pull food away, restrict their access to food,…

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Six sample consequences for children's disagreeable dinner table behavior that will eliminate misbehavior as well as food refusal

Jul 28, 2010 by

1.  Don’t let them finish their dinner if they won’t cooperate and follow your rules at the table. Screaming, whining, complaining, whatever it is your children are doing that you don’t want to send them out into the cold cruel world in the habit of doing, make getting food dependent on doing things your way.  Be unemotional about it. Absence makes the stomach grow fonder. The desperation will shift from you to them.  While in the immediate, this consequence means they eat less, in the long-term they will eat more. Hunger turns eating suddenly into something kids want to do.  While pushing food creates resistance, pulling it away increases desire. As Elaine Gibson writes in “Useless Power Struggles,” “We can’t make children eat, but we can make them wish they had.”

2.   Send them to their room, along with number one.

3.    Make them eat alone at…

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Cold Culture Eating: Why eating at the table together isn’t happening for some American kids, and Seven Tips to Warming Up the Culture at Your Table

Jun 21, 2010 by

A recent “Zits” comic shows Jeremy pointing his cell phone at the steaming dish his mom is holding, while she asks him, “Do you think Pierce would like to stay for dinner?”

We then see Jeremy sending the photo to Pierce, who responds to the photo–and to the invitation–with “EWW!”

“No,” Jeremy replies. “ Pierce hates meatloaf.”

We had a similar experience when my daughter’s friend was hanging around right before dinner one night. To my invitation to join us at the table, her answer was, “What is it?”

She needed a description of all offerings, then decided she could eat one of the three available. So she joined us.

Many times, children have come to our table and thought nothing of openly turning up their little noses at everything that was served. Expressing distaste at what’s been served is clearly…

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How to get kids to eat at the table?

Apr 1, 2010 by

You want to have harmonious family meals. You want your kids to willingly eat your home cooked dinners and have peaceful conversations around the table. Problem is, the kids will have none of it. They will only be quiet, sit still and eat in front of the TV or a video game, maybe. Or they just won’t come to the table at all and forage in the kitchen when they want to eat. Maybe they’ll come to the table but won’t eat. You push and they resist.

What I’ve done with my kids has worked like a charm. My 17- and 19-year-olds have eaten dinner with us at the table every day of their lives, if they were at home. We eat home cooked meals every day and my goal has been to introduce them to as many different healthy foods as possible. They have always eaten whatever I’ve served,…

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