To stop cooking dinner when childminding

[Littlepurpleprincess]

I have been a registered childminder for about 2 years now and I've always offered a cooked meal at the end of the day (5pm). DH, DS, me and the mindees all sit together at the table. I do a meal plan for the month so parents know what I'm cooking and a have a healthy eating policy.

It's usually along the lines of spag bol, macaroni cheese, stews, casseroles, sausage and mash.....basically it's your typical home cooking.

However, I have several children who refuse to eat their dinner, or have awful table manners, or prefer to graze (ie eat what they want, when they want). I feel the parents aren't really on my side, and aren't that bothered about getting their kids to sit at the table and eat a proper meal each day.

Everyday I talk to the parents and I'm always honest about how the children have behaved at meal time and how much they've eaten but I know that the parents then go and feed them junk food and treats straight after picking them up.

Would I be being unreasonable to say I am no longer offering a cooked dinner due to lack of demand?

As a parent would it put you off a childminder if they didn't offer Dinner?

I will provide a healthy snack for children after school, and I will continue to offer breakfast and lunch, and healthy snacks throughout the day for the little ones.

Dinner time atm is really stressful. DH and I are tired of it and DS is beginning to copy some of the unwanted behaviour. I feel its important for families to sit together and eat at the end of each day but right now we are missing out on that. Is it selfish to want it to be just family at dinner time?

I love my childminder, merely for the fact that she doesn't judge me or my parenting skills :) Dinner doesn't come into it.

I've only ever fed them chicken nuggets once and they were home-made! (smug mode )

A pot noodle? Seriously?

My CM provides a hot meal at lunchtime and links it to the local schools daily menu. At tea, 4pm, she provides on different days, sandwiches, crackers, cheese rasins etc, hot dogs (very popular), simple pasta, this seems to work well. I think 5pm is quite late for a 4 year old to wait for a hot meal and my son wouldn't sit still for that either because he is quite hyper. They all sit around really nicely at 4pm but the CM doesn't eat with them then, but her children do because they have school dinners so prefer a tea aswell.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at fairhairedandfrustrated

When DS started with his CM he was her only little one still around at tea time and she started doing him teas as you describe at my request. As time went on she got other pre schoolers whose parents wanted them to eat before being picked up too and did the same for them. To ease the domestic situation she started doing her own family's evening meal at the same time.

If she had wanted to stop the teas it would have caused a real headache. Mind you DS ate his tea and knew there was nothing coming his way when he got home. In your shoes I'd stop too, as snickers said the parents you have don't sound like they care about good nutrition. Sad for the children really but not your problem to parent them properly.

I have this problem with a mindee. She only eats
chicken nuggets or fish fingers.
she will eat the following if they are tinned
macaroni cheese
spag bol
tinned stew/chilli type things
bob the builder/scooby doo/princess spaghetti shapes.
soup

and she'll eat little froamge frais pots, crisps, biscuits, sweets ice cream,ice lollies toast and grapes.

She throws everythign else she doens't like on the floor. Which is pretty much everything
It's very dishearning when you make a nice pan of soup and it gets tiped up, with " i no like" said by child.
or one time I gave her chicken casserole, mash and peas. She wouldn't eat it so is aid "try one outhful". So she did, then gagged and retched and spat it out. She won't eat spag bol if I make it myself.

oooh the pretending to choke trick, I am familiar with that one! Also, the 'holding it in my mouth until mummy gets here' and the 'lifting the fork to my mouth, pretending to take a bite, and putting fully loaded spoon back into bowl' trick.

My reaction to this is usually a blunt 'don't pretend to eat it'.

You do sound a little judgy of the parents OP which I assume is what Fairhaired was getting at. OK it's not good to have ice cream for breakfast but as for the manners thing. The kids spend the majority of their waking hours with you and I doubt you'd like to be blamed for them occasionally forgetting their manners.

I suppose I am a little judgey about it but I'm not blaming the parent for the child occasionally forgetting their manners - all children do that - what I don't want to do anymore is make all this effort and see it go to waste. And yes I spend a lot of time with them but the parent has 100% more influence over the children than I do (quite rightly) so as much as I try, when the child goes home for the weekend, all the hard work is undone and we go back to square one.

It's foolish to say your childminder doesn't judge you, everyone you meet will form an opinion of you. My opinion of the parents of my mindees is that they are all lovely, they are all doing a great job, but with this issue we are not in agreement, and as a result, I can no longer provide a cooked meal at the end of the day.

As you can imagine I grow to care a lot about the children I mind, and I do find it very frustrating when a child is being allowed to develop habits that may affect their health in later life. I hope that, as a parent, if I were doing something that could have a negative affect on my DS, that someone might point it out to me and offer a bit if advise.

littlepurple you are right though, and when looking out for a CM would pick someone like you with your values.

OP You should be able to offer a "light tea" at 5pm - that's what my daughter got at childminder's and after-school club and we were glad for it - sandwiches, fruit, water, milk, etc. It was fine.

Then your family can eat together later.

thanks Piglet, I am a judgey, grumpy bum today but I just had a challenging day at work thats all, I'm nice really.......

Awww don't worry littlepruple dd in bed so I am more relaxed and rational, yes you are totally right. Now that dd understanding is a lot better, I am trying to get her to sit at the table but its so hard. I end up plonking her down on the couch at times and spooning food into her mouth to get her to eat, not the ideal but at times needs must. I am 8 weeks pg with dc 2 and I am devoid of energy and sicky most times so tend to to the easiest which is not the best.

you do sound great littlepurple. tinned spag bol, and macaroni cheese yuck, remember having that as a uni student and it was vile, nothing compared to the real stuff.

I think that you are perfectly entitledto be judgey-if parents allow DCs to be rude they will be judged.

piglet I would have fought you physically for tinned spag bol and mac cheese when I was a student! And tinned beans and sausages. All cold of course.

OP you are nice. Relax.

Dinner on the couch sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I spent most of my pregnancy watching disney movies with DH Congratulations!

Tinned mac cheese is nasty btw, DS used to like it so once a week I would let him eat it, while he was being babysat by my aunt, then I didn't have smell it.

But by saying things like 'all your hard work is undone' at the weekend it sounds like you are taking all the credit for the nicer aspects of your mindees and none of the responsibilty for areas where improvement is needed. It sounds as if you think that if they were in your care full time they'd be perfect.

Thanks purple linerunner I did used to like tinned curry when I was a student and Frey Bentos pies, oh those were the days. Now I am pg I sometimes want spaghetti hoops on toast with cheese on top. Their all mine as dh and dd hate them lol

I know that I sound a bit of a snob but now I hate any meals in cans like the spag bol, meatballs, mac cheese ewwwwww.

YANBU Sounds to me like your mindees might be too knackered at the end of the day to behave at dinner. I would give them a snacky but healthy dinner (sandwiches, veg + dip etc) then once they've all gone sit down to a peaceful nutritious dinner with your family. I have to say I LOVE the fact that my CM feeds DS a tasty proper dinner so I don't have to. And he eats stuff there he's refuse at home. It's a shame for the better behaved kids you mind, but less stress all round will do no harm.

OP you sound wonderful and it's a pity you're not more appreciated and respected by both mindees and their parents. I agree with the majority, ditch the dinners and offer a snack instead.

It is funny how dd eats much better (not always) with her godmother who is very strict and a stickler for good table manners. When we came to pick dd up from her godmothers we saw her sitting properly at the table, eating dinner with a knife and fork. She acts totally different there then when she is at home. Me trying to replicate it falls flat on my face.

I think that if dd was with a CM like littlepurple she would probably be eating properly at the table most of the time (dd has preliminary dx of ASD so can be inconsistant)