What to do if the child is naughty at the table?

Of course, many moth­ers are famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion when a child is naughty dur­ing meals (at din­ner, break­fast). By the way, psy­chol­o­gists say that such behav­ior of a child at the table is inevitable and soon­er or lat­er the process of eat­ing turns into a real bat­tle. So what to do if the child does not want to eat?

The main thing is to stay calm, no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be! At a cer­tain age, when the child begins to real­ize his “I” (some­where in 2–4 years), the for­ma­tion of his per­son­al­i­ty and char­ac­ter begins. The eas­i­est way to demon­strate your self and impor­tance to your child is by refus­ing to eat. He per­fect­ly sees how this upsets his par­ents and how they are ready to ful­fill any whim if he eats “at least anoth­er spoon­ful” of por­ridge or soup. The child learns to manip­u­late his par­ents. There­fore, the more emo­tion­al­ly par­ents react to such behav­ior at the table, the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to feed the child.

What can cause whims while eating?

Odd­ly enough, some­times par­ents them­selves unwit­ting­ly push the child to refuse lunch. If your child snacks on choco­lates, cook­ies, and soda chips between meals, is that sur­pris­ing? On the oth­er hand, if every­one in the house is used to snack­ing on unhealthy foods, and the child does not get such “good­ies”, he may feel left out and unloved.
Also, if one par­ent forces the child to eat some­thing that, in his opin­ion, is not tasty, and at the same time the oth­er gen­er­ous­ly treats him to a sweet pie, then at the table the child will be even more capri­cious. Adult fam­i­ly mem­bers must agree among them­selves and main­tain parental author­i­ty.
Many moth­ers pan­ic if the child refus­es to eat over and over again. They are ready to do any­thing, ful­fill any whim. Should not be doing that. If a child gets used to manip­u­lat­ing you, it will be very dif­fi­cult to wean him.
Some­times unap­pe­tiz­ing food is to blame for a child’s unwill­ing­ness to eat. Try to dec­o­rate the dish, make it more inter­est­ing. Maybe this will arouse the inter­est of the child?
Also, the child’s appetite may dis­ap­pear due to a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion in the fam­i­ly. Chil­dren very sub­tly feel the mood of adults, and if some­thing is wrong with you, they can adopt an anx­ious state and refuse to eat, act up.

How to feed a child?

• Forc­ing a child is use­less. The more you insist, the more objec­tions, most­ly from pure stub­born­ness. Move away from the child and tell him that he can eat his por­tion when­ev­er he wants. He won’t get any­thing else before din­ner any­way.
• The same dish can be cooked and served in dif­fer­ent ways. Let the milk por­ridge become “Carl­son’s por­ridge”, add a lit­tle jam to it. Be cre­ative, inter­est the child.
• Every­one likes when their efforts are appre­ci­at­ed. Invite your child to help you pre­pare din­ner, for exam­ple, let him stir the soup or brush the buns with egg. Your baby will be very proud when, sit­ting down at the table, he will tell every­one that he helped cook. And he ate every­thing he “cooked”!
• By imi­tat­ing adults, chil­dren learn and expe­ri­ence the world. Gath­er the whole fam­i­ly around the din­ner table at least once a day. The kid will see the behav­ior of the house­hold at the table and begin to copy it, gob­bling up food on both cheeks.
• Do you like monot­o­nous food? Not? Of course, so does your child. In addi­tion to the fact that a vari­ety of food is sim­ply nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment of a child’s body, the same dish can get bored, even if it is a favorite. Veg­eta­bles, fruits, dairy prod­ucts, cere­als, meat and fish dish­es — let your child’s diet be com­plete.
• In the inter­vals between main meals, it is bet­ter not to give the child sweets, this will ruin his appetite. If the baby is real­ly hun­gry, offer him a banana or an apple.
• Have you noticed how in nature even the most unloved dish­es were eat­en with a bang? Fresh air, a walk stim­u­late the appetite, so before din­ner, go for a walk with your baby, let him run, jump, play with the ball. His appetite will wake up and he will eat every­thing that you put on his plate with­out whims!