Eating only until tummy is full bollocks

[pjmask]

It's all gone too far. Lunch with dsis, bil and their kids in a local restaurant. Their DC order meals that are clearly going to be far too much just from the description. Before they have even started dsis is reminding them they don't have to eat all of it, or even any of it, just until their tummy tells them they are full.

They eat a very small amount of the most unhealthy, nutritionally void part of the meal then announce they are full. Fine. Then they order puddings five minutes later. I will not let my dc order puddings as they have also not finished their meals parroting "tummy says no" nonsense. I suggest we pop to the supermarket on the way home and get ice cream to enjoy later when tummy is not so full instead of wasting money and food buying puddings for four full children. Get told by bil in a rather patronising way that "in our house we choose not to battle over food"

A. What a total dick he is
B. Telling a child who is full to wait a couple of hours before pudding is not having a "battle" over food
C. They are sadly not the only people I've encountered recently who have over-embraced this mantra. For the record my eldest is 22 and I've never been a "clear your plate" sort of parent. The days of great aunt gertie holding your nose and forcing liver and onions in your mouth are hopefully gone! But there is a balance to be had surely, in teaching children not to overload their plates, over-order and simply to appreciate food (especially meat) and how easily available it is?

Aibu?

You are BVVU. Best way to give a kid an eating disorder is to do what you are doing. Just chill out ffs.

PS, I normally hate kids in restaurants, but I'd much rather they are well fed and happy than have to swallow food they don't fucking want.

So just let them do what they want all the time? Your job as a parent is to guide and teach appropriate behaviour surely, including with eating

Focusing on waste avoidance isn't healthy. It's an anxiety of the parent's that the child is supposed to pander to.

Serve smaller portions. Bring food home from a restaurant. Suggest going Dutch instead of an even split of the bill. No child should be saddled with the responsibility of assuaging a parent's anxiety.

While a child might eat only a little of some poor nutritional offering in a restaurant, this only becomes a dietary problem if they are allowed to do the same at home every day.

It's very possible that the parents (the BIL and SIL) were nervous about their children's behaviour in the restaurant if faced with food that didn't appeal to them and wanted to make sure they were relaxed and not inclined to complain in a way that would have spoiled the occasion for the rest of the party. So they ordered whatever appealed to them from the adult menu and only ate as much as they felt like eating. Maybe the children themselves were affected by nervousness about the restaurant setting. Some children are thrown of their usual eating game by unusual settings. The OP appears to have managed to cause upset herself by way of cat's bum face vibes anyway.
“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley.”
As the poet said.

There is more to a meal out with other people than nutritional content and whether all the food gets eaten. I think pjmask lost sight of this and needs to address anxiety around food she may be experiencing (as suggested by other posters and as she herself has acknowledged).

Snowy111 Thu 02-Jan-20 23:02:30

So just let them do what they want all the time? Your job as a parent is to guide and teach appropriate behaviour surely, including with eating

Yes appropriate behaviour needs to be taught 24/7, whether by gentle reminders or a reprimand. And maybe these parents were teaching appropriate restaurant behaviour? Maybe it's easier to teach restaurant behaviour - sitting for quite a long stretch, perusing the menu, ordering politely and audibly for themselves, placing the napkin in their laps, thanking the server for the food - without adding in the complication of 'you order it, you eat it'.

Avoidance of food waste is not an anxiety. It’s what we should all be doing as part of a battle against catastrophic climate change.

It’s very clear that pandering to their kids around food is part of bil’s general strategy and not a one off in the restaurant.

YANBU

I have visited counties where people are literally starving and it had changed my outlook with food. I give or encourage my DD to have food I know she could potentially manage, more is available if she wants it. If she is full I would wait before I offer her something else. I don’t believe children should be forced to eat but also it’s important we appreciate and value food and not be gready or wasteful.

Snowy it is a symptom of anxiety if your DH notices you are killing the mood of a meal out because you can't get past what other people are doing with food, and the OP has herself acknowledged that her whole family may have an issue with food thanks to the way they were parented.

Her sister has chosen a way of dealing with her anxiety that happens to be the polar opposite of the OP's. Neither is completely healthy, but 'pandering' as you call it is likely in the long run to lead to children who do not have issues around food as long as they are presented with healthy choices at home and for lunch in school.

There is literally no area of our human activity in the west that doesn't contribute to climate change. Cleaning your plate isn't a make or break element of reducing your carbon footprint. Eating out by itself is a huge issue. Shopping at a supermarket and cooking your food at home is a problem too. Do you grow all your own veg and fruit, have you converted your lawn to productive use, do you bike all the way to a farm for milk and eggs that are produced humanely and not subsequently transported miles around the country to and from processing facilities and distribution centres and supermarkets? It's ridiculous to focus on one minute little detail of the food picture, especially when we are talking about what children do with food.

Asking children to take on your anxiety about climate change (or the hungry people elsewhere in the world) isn't fair. Deal with your concerns yourself and separate out the feeding of your children from them. Eating all the food on your plate is not actually going to help anyone who is hungry. Leaving some that you can't finish isn't going to contribute to the problems of those going without. Make a donation to a local food bank once a month if you feel so moved. But don't guilt your children.

Generations of children used to be guilted into cleaning their plates by parents exhorting them to remember the starving children of Africa or preached at about waste when their own grandparents used to go hungry, etc. It wasn't fair to burden children like that.

@mathanxiety totally agree with everything you said

So don’t install any values in your children about taking responsibility for your actions or caring for others in the world, they should just care about themselves and what they want. Sounds like one way to raise entitled brats.

“Tummy says no”

Ffs

Also, describing this as “anxiety”

Get a grip

Oh for God’s sake, no one at any point has said anything about making children clear their plate!

And if your children can’t cope with a gentle reminder not to waste food because you think that will result in an eating disorder, then frankly you have bigger problems with your children than a couple of chips.

If only children were programmable so that we could install the right app instead of trying to instill good habits, life would be so much easier for parents.

YABU. I always leave a bit of room for desert if eating out in a restaurant.

Yabu

I know someone who makes their kid eat more before they can have pudding if they haven’t finished their plate. Literally getting them to shove in more calories before eating more calories.

Her Dd is funnily enough overweight.

Yabu.

Teach them this at home where they have dinner almost every night, not in a restaurant where eating out is a rare occasion.

I'm surprised by how many people agree with the BIL and not the OP. I think he sounds insufferable. I'd rather go out for a meal with OP and her children any day.

I think there are two separate issues.
i) clear your plate - most people would agree this is a bad idea and damages self regulation

ii) order in-line with how hungry you are. DS2 sometimes constructs a meal from a starter and sides or just has a side.

I am not concerned about the waste in the first example but I would be less impressed with the second unless it’s food that can be taken away e.g. pizza

Yabu to judge other people's methods.

They sound very sensible.

but I would be less impressed with the second unless it’s food that can be taken away e.g. pizza

Most food can be taken away though. I always ask for a doggie bag if there’s anything of any note left on my plate. My kids are now in the habit of that too.

I think the starving children in Africa attitude is insufferable.

Yes there are people starving in the world- we have food banks for a start.

That has sod all to do with food waste or scarcity and is entirely down to our shitty economic system. If you want your kids to care about starving people, teach them history and critical thinking (ie how not to be a Tory).

Don't guilt them at the dinner table.

YANBU pjmask

On average people in the UK throw out a third of the food they buy every week. Most of it untouched.

I never understand why there's not more outrage on here about that.

Their kids will eventually end up with diabetes eating like that. That's sad.