Alternatives

[lillibet]

I'm curious what other parents think of this post. Our solution has been that Alice doesn't have to eat what she doesn't like at dinner and then she has a before-bed snack of yogurt mixed with oatmeal and fruit, so she won't go to bed hungry, which drastically affects the ease of bedtime. And, mostly Alice will find something on her dinner plate to eat if she's hungry and if it's not a hungry day, very little is acceptable. And she does eat so many things that it hasn't been a big deal. But forewarned is half the octopus, so I think about strategies.

I understand the theory behind what these folks are trying, but in the family I know who did this, the alternative was for the kids to nuke themselves a hot dog and the outcome was two teenagers who really didn't eat anything but hotdogs.

Comments

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Our method is primarily to ignore whether or not the kids are eating their dinner. We do not offer an alternative, and we do not offer a bedtime snack. Bedtime generally starts within an hour of the conclusion of dinner, sometimes sooner, depending on how late dinner was. (Bedtime starts at 7pm, dinner is usually served sometime between 5:45 and 6:15.)

If there is dessert, we require that a certain amount of actual dinner is eaten first. Otherwise, we have no requirements.

I will have to consider whether the method outlined in the post would work here, and whether we'd be willing to try it. I suspect it probably wouldn't, because there is no such thing as a food Erika consistently likes but does not love. (Karl mainly rejects food when Erika says she thinks it's yucky. We are trying to get her to be quiet about it.)