to have put dd's dinner in the bin?

[greenwheelie]

Dinner tonight - scampi, potato wedges and salad. I put some chunks of beetroot in the salad. DD2(6) anounced she hates beetroot. I told her she could eat one piece only. We have always had the rule (dd is 3rd child) that you have to try everything on the plate.

My Mum and Dad are here for the evening. DD sat and cried, fake-coughed and kept shouting that she was going to be sick. We ignore her for a while, then I said if she couldn't be quiet and eat then she would have to leave the room. She continued so I told her to go. After 5 minutes she was quiet so I asked her to come back and join us. She immediately started the drama again. I told her she was spoiling the dinner for all of us and if she didn't stop that would be the end of her meal. She got a piece of beetroot on her fork and waved it around, crying and coughing. So I took her food away and sent her out. The food is now in the bin and dd is in bed.

My parents are now saying I am like an army general and that dd will be hungry. Was I being unreasonable and AIBU to feel very unsupported in trying to discipline a strong-willed child?

Yabu
I would have let her eat her dinner, and if she hadn't eaten enough there would be no dessert. Also why not wrap the food up, she may have it later when she is hungry?

From what you say she was determined to play up, I think the beetroot was the minor problem. She could have eaten everything else first and then tried to get out of the piece of beetroot if she was that hungry.

I regurlarly serve thing my DC don't like and every now and then I ask them to try one bite.

Well done for staying consistant, despite the guests.

Manic I can just imagine!

Well done OP! Pushing your child to try a food is perfectly acceptable. I pushed my four year old DD to try some strawberry yesterday prior to getting some cake. She cried and moaned but I stood my ground. Se tried a bit, apologised for her behaviour and the had some cake. I hate wasting food and I hate tantrums and drama at the table.

To the people who say they can't believe you would force a child to put something in their bodies that they would choose not to - do you never tell your children to eat their greens, or veg etc.?

Do your dc always willingly eat what's on their plate? If they make a fuss about the meal you've cooked, what do you do?

I'm not saying high drama is acceptable (esp at the dinner table) but really, pick your battles.
Were you not just trying to prove something in front of your own parents? I think you did a little bit of grandstanding of your own.

Beetroot is pretty vile though, if your daughter eats scampi and salad, you are lucky. Why not just let her eat her meal without the beetroot rather than attempting to force her to eat something she does not want? I think this is controlling behaviour.

YABU for the beetroot Nazism.

But YANBU for discliplining her over the tantrum.

I totally get that some kids decide to be horrid for the sake of it at times, and if your DD is anything like mine, if you'd taken the beetroot off of her plate then she would've just kicked off over whatever colour beaker she had or something equally as inconsequential instead.

Little girls are vile.

I agree with your parents!

Why do there have to be such strict and stringent rules about meal times anyway?

Because in our house if we didn't have strict rules DS1 would eat nothing but sausages and chicken nuggets and fries. He will not try new foods willingly. He's always been problematic with it, and the only way to get him to try foods is to follow the same type of rule as the OP - but only with fairly standard things. With new and 'interesting' foods I wouldn't include them in the rule. DS2 is a different kettle of fish, if he sees me eating something he is often tempted to try it and he is already enjoying a much broader variety of food.

Although in my house I also include the rule that if they won't even have one mouthful of dinner then they go straight to bed, because clearly they're too tired to even try to be reasonable. Lo and behold the only 2 times I've ever had to do that he was asleep within 20 minutes so clearly it was true.

However he will have already had an afterschool snack so wouldn't be perishingly hungry. Also bed time is currently 7.30, I may have to adapt with later bedtimes.

Yabu
Food shouldn't be made into a battle

Haven't read the whole thread sorry. But YABU - if it was anything else other than beetroot YANBU - but beetroot is the most horrible horrible food of the devil and your DD has done well to recognise this so early on. And you can't just take out the offending beetroot - the damage will have been done nad it will have spread all its yucky beetroot redness over all the other stuff. Your poor poor DD. (I don't like beetroot)

Would have pretty much done the same, although may not have binned but likely to have sent her to bed but based on experience our DS' then come back and finish it off.

May seem a tad harsh when they are younger but it seems to have worked for us vs cousins that have some very specific food demands which makes feeding them a PITA.

OP I don't know why you bothered asking if YABU. You obviously think you weren't despite the majority of posters saying you are. It is NEVER a good idea to start power battles over food.

You also keep saying it wasnt about beetroot, it's about her behaviour, but you miss the point.

Her behaviour was caused by you insisting she ate the sodding beetroot! If you'd taken that off her plate and she had continued to behave in a silly way, then yes tell her to leave the table. You never gave her a chance as the the thing she was upset about, was never taken out of the equation.

I agree they need to be pushed a bit - I know a lot of it is luck but we have always been consistent about everyone eating the one meal I've cooked, no dessert unless you eat the main course etc. I think it has helped and I know the dcs can go to someone else's house and eat whatever they are having. We've had plenty of kids come for tea who will only eat 4 different foods or whatever and tbh it's bloody annoying!

My cousin wasn't made to eat anything he didn't like as a child in an unpressured environment.

He's now at university and for at least a decade now has ONLY eaten bread, chips, cheese, and cheese and tomato pizza. That's it. I would count that as food issues.

But this wasn't really about the food, it was about the whining strop DD was throwing. YANBU not to tolerate that behaviour. Maybe you shouldn't have thrown the food out but we all make mistakes.

Nice sentiment peoplesprincess

When I taught children with autism a lot of children would come to us with massive food issues, to the point where some of them would literally eat two or three foods and that was it. Within months we would have the vast majority of them eating a good range of foods. How? By presenting food as an interesting thing that they had control over rather than something they had to force down with anxious or annoyed parents watching over them.

When I babysat my cousin for a summer I resolved his food issues, again just by having no emotion or expectations with food - I would present the food, let him eat what he wanted and take the rest away, as opposed to his mother who had rules and punishments and who had turned eating into an anxiety-filled battleground.

My own DS is only 18 months currently but he eats pretty much anything. He has an open choice for lunch, and gets a dinner served up. He never refuses dinner but on rare occasions will only eat a few spoonfuls. That's fine, he can have a banana and some bread instead. Not the end of the world. He's very keen on food and willing to try anything, which is partly just his personality but also I think partly because I have never ever forced him to eat anything. One "no" is enough, he doesn't have to eat it.

I think I was reasonable to end her meal but maybe not to throw the food away. She is now asleep however so won't be eating it.

Not sure about putting it in the bin tbh, but haven't got a problem with a DC needing to at least try a mouthful of something before they decide they don't like it. After they can decide. How do you decide if you have never experienced it? Also, I think 6 is quite old enough to explain politely that you don't want something. My dd is 5 and would have been in trouble for that sort of behaviour. Some may call it control, I call it understanding appropriate behaviour and learning self-discipline. An ongoing process, so children are obviously not expected to behanve like adults, but without being taught to understand what behaviour is inappropriate they will never learn.

You know she would have kicked off about something even if there was no beetroot in sight.

My children (11 and 8) have a tiny number of "don't like" foods, really, just two or three each. I have never forced them to eat anything - its a monumentally stupid thing to do.

Yes I think she just needed to sleep and would have behaved like that over the shower, teeth-brushing or whatever if not the food.

And the OP has said she wouldn't have forced the beetroot if her dd had asked not to have to eat it, rather than having a drama.

Anyway - according to the latest research you should have just smiled adoringly at them and then they'd have eaten it up.

DCs regularly get grated raw beetroot as it's in the salads we like - I'm not sure I'd go for the old pickled stuff these days..