Parenting

This post isn’t about fighting over dinner with your kids…but with your partner. Do you and your partner have different ideas about mealtimes, what should be eaten and how much? Donna Fish counsels a couple over their issue of “clean your plate”.  Luckily, they resolve it.

The Dinner Wars:  Parents’ Fighting over Feeding the Kids

by Donna Fish

The other day I was counseling a couple who came to me over their own fighting over their kids’ food.  He:  “I think Karen defers to the kids too much.  They should eat what is on their plate, and finish it all!”  She:  “I refuse to make my kid eat chicken if she doesn’t like chicken; she has great eating habits and was happy with the cantaloupe and salad.”

Sound familiar?  Perhaps the genders are flipped in your household, but invariably, parents differ over leniency, or how to handle it when kids don’t want to eat what is given to them.  Often it is related to how we as children were raised around food.  As this Dad said to me plainly:  “I had to eat what was there for dinner, or I didn’t get food.  I just want Karen to respect my position and not fight me in front of the kids.”

Then he sheepishly shared a story of how he had a standoff once with his Dad over being forced to eat something he didn’t like.  He stayed at the table all day.

Feeding our kids, and feeding ourselves, often can raise lots of issues.  Unfortunately in their case, this couple came for help because they were in a stalemate over how to handle their differing perspectives and were fighting in front of the kids.  Like any couple issue, the ghosts of others are lurking there in the room as we are playing out the current scenes.  Add to the mix the stakes of teaching kids good eating habits, and you have a perfect storm of tension, anger and polarization.

A few tips:

1)    Think carefully Read More »Parents…Fighting Over Dinner?