Mealtime Hassles

The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Many children use mealtime as their main battleground for power struggles. It's often hard for them to behave when they're forced to sit still for an hour and fraternize with the enemy (their siblings) or keep from clowning around with their buddies (their siblings)

Logical consequences

If your children are often late for dinner, let them miss it. If this habit is deeply ingrained, set them up to miss out on their favorite meals.

If your children play with their food, remove it and say, "Food is something we eat, not play with. When you're ready to eat properly, you may have it back."

When your children are noisy or rowdy at the table, you can remove them to another room to eat, and tell them they can return when they are ready to behave appropriately, or you can take your own plate and eat elsewhere. Either is effective, because children don't like it when the pack is separated.

Solutions toward self-direction

Offer choices: "If you can't behave properly at the table, then you'll have to eat in your room."

Use impartial descriptions and give information: "Rowdiness is not allowed while we eat." "You're talking very loudly and haven't touched anything on your plate." "Dinner is finished in ten minutes." (If they're cutting up and are famished, they'll straighten up and eat quietly, especially if they've witnessed their full plates dragged out from under them before.)

Use humor: Quietly leave the table with your plate and eat elsewhere, or come back to the table wearing noise protection. You can also try sitting at the table with something noisy-your old saxophone, a drum set, pots and pans to clang together. They get the message when they're covering their ears.

Use questioning: "Do you think it's pleasant to watch people play with their spaghetti?" "What are the rules about being loud or rowdy at the table."

Never get sucked into your children's power struggles. Kids who learn to manipulate others learn to manipulate themselves (self-deceit).