Grandchildren's eating habits AIBU?

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I love my grandson, but feel irritated about his eating habits. I'm posting here to see if this behaviour is the new normal and I'm being picky.
He's 6. I cooked a meal for them yesterday - a bit of salad and some tortellini, with sauce to add if they wanted to i.e. deliberately bland (but this applies to all meals we have with them).
So, firstly, he doesn't sit down at the table, but kneels or leans. Then he takes a mouth or two, and then wanders off. Then, a few minutes later, he reappears and might take a bit more, or, if what he wants is gone, gets given something else, like toast.
and then, about 30 minutes later, he'll want some of the pudding. And get given it.
I always used to say (when I had children) that you didn't get pudding if you hadn't eaten at least some of the main course and, once you'd got down from the table, that was it and you had to wait until the next meal.
Parenting is hard enough, without making it harder than needs be.
AIBU?

The big deal is that, at 6 years old, he should be able to sit at a table, eat his dinner and then get up when it's finished. It is his parents' fault that the child has no table manners!

This drives me fucking mad! As soon as they started feeding themselves they were given finger food as she called it 🙄Which to me is just an excuse not to cook the kids proper meals. The’d go to the fridge or cupboard & get themselves a sausage roll, chocolate, cake, sweets, or crisps, then wander around with it whilst dropping it all over the floor & smearing everything with their greasy dirty hands. On the rare occasion that she cooked a roast dinner, they left most of it & went on to have several snacks. I’ve never known them to finish a meal. The mother has an issue with food, & has passed it on to all of her kids.

I can’t understand that attitude. They aren’t supervising in place of adults. Both younger and older get something out of it. It wasn’t every day they still played with their peers. Being chosen to help was something they were excited for. Another school locally does gardeners (yr6) and seeds (year R)
Same model in lots of youth groups. I’m a volunteer girlguiding leader and we have girls age 14-17 as young leaders. They and younger girls age 4-13 all benefit. They aren’t in place of leaders just another part of the community.
Mine’s 17 now and talks fondly of helping the nursery children at primary school and has a volunteer role now which I see as a positive for her development and CV.
But like I said her school was very small and family friendly not violence and sex talk.
It was literally chatting, showing them where to put trays, helping pour water etc. Age appropriate responsibility is good for children.

I have a pretty good idea of how schools work having been at them as a pupil. IME teachers don't spend much time choosing carefully. Many of them unload the chores.

I've been a lunchtime mummy and a reading "mentor" in primary school when it was not my job to model behaviour or teach other children how to read.

At secondary I was a swimming supervisor because I was very good at swimming. I was given a long stick and put in charge of my bully who couldn't swim. I enjoyed patrolling the poolside and saying: "Madeleine! You'll never learn if you touch the sides," and prodding Madeleine away from safety as she gasped and flailed.

It felt great to get my own back but on reflection, I should not have been allowed to do this no matter how shitty Madeleine was to me on dry land. Madeleine could have drowned and I'd have felt slightly sad about that.

I was also a prefect. In my school you didn't choose, you were roped in by lazy teachers once you got into the Lower Sixth.

I had no interest in whether children in the first year to third year came in at lunchtime (not allowed) or who wore white socks or grey ones or black ones which was the privilege of certain years. I just wanted to spend my lunchtimes with my friends and consequently often abandoned my post at the doors to the Science Block. Something really bad could have happened but it never did. And if it did, would it have been my fault? I was a 17-year-old girl who liked The Teardrop Explodes and not a security guard.

It’s not babysitting them. Teachers and/or dinner ladies are there. It was on a rota not everyday. The yr 6 were excited to be chosen.
So at lunch they’d sit at table with say 5 little ones, chat, help little ones pour water, perhaps help them carry tray. Not every day just on a rota. Still plenty of time to play with peers.
The playing was a sports mentor thing. So they had a bag of playground games like bean bags and the yr 6 would teach the smaller infants playground games. Again on a rota.
Mine was always excited to be chosen. It was a lovely small family atmosphere school, I really didn’t think it was unusual. Anyway she’s 17 now, has fond memories of it and chooses to volunteer in her spare time.
Age appropriate responsibility is good for children.

I think you are right to expect that he stays at the table. Might be hard to get him to eat a lot but he needs to stay at the table for a reasonable amount of time.

I can't understand your attitude either but that's okay. We are all different.

I'm sure your 17-year-old talks fondly of their experience but it's not all about them and their CV, is it? Do you know what every child under their supervision said? I was supervised at school mostly by adults and some of them were horrors.

I would not go along with that. I would not want my teenage daughter or son to concentrate on looking after children. That is the job of an adult - either parent or teacher.

I think the purpose of school is to concentrate on your academic or vocational pursuits in work time and pursue your other interests outside.

her school was very small and family friendly not violence and sex talk.

^^ that is a strange thing to say. I went to really nice schools and nothing bad ever happened to me but that's not to say alarming things didn't happen like the boy who talked about punching his sister in the vagina.

I'm not paranoid but I am aware that damaged people or those who want to do damage walk among us. That's why I want to keep an eye on things. But if you don't, that's up to you

What I should have said was that I was picked on by a 17-year-old who chose to ridicule my accent. Every time I opened my mouth he'd go into a Dick Van Dyke routine.

I'm sure he was carefully chosen and was just trying to correct me.

I would speak to parents about rules you are going to implement as a 6 year old should be able to sit at a table and eat and wait till they can be excused. In a nursery you would sit still you finish or till all have finished. In a school you need to eat most of your lunch before turning your tray round to eat pudding or leave the table.

YABU to be so irritated about this and invested in parenting style and eating habits, especially if he is only occasionally eating at your place and not staying with you over the summer for example.

As someone who teaches affluent young adults, the ‘I let my child do as they please’ is not working out well for the kids’ mental health and general life skills. I see reams of 18-22 year olds who are completely anxious, under prepared for life and also weirdly entitled, with huge expectations thing will be done for them/terrible behaviour will be tolerated. So…Yes, it is unreasonable to not teach your child basic table manners imo - sit and eat a meal, no pudding until you eat some main course, no ‘extras’ if you didn’t eat your meal is not abuse, it’s basic parenting - teaching them skills they will need for adult life. So I agree with you OP, but also what can you do if your grandson’s parents don’t agree? I’d enforce the ‘at granny’s house the rule is we sit and eat our meals, getting up from the table means we have finished and the meal is over.’ But might not make you popular!

It's like stepping back in time to the 1950s here. Since mine have a fruit/yogurt pudding not spotted dick or what have you I have no idea what purpose withholding that would have, especially for a child with a dietary condition.

I mean surely you'd what your family on a bog standard day to day tea with Gran not to have to sit and exhibit the exact behaviour you'd expect at a school or nursery? I don't
Let mine run and come back and fore but often meals are casual and relaxed, and they are perfectly capable of sitting and eating at school

Wow just think if only all children always had their meals at the table CAMHS and the psychiatric hospitals would be out of business.

Not to forget the importance of no pudding if you don't eat all your dinner.

Amazingly I never let any of my children go to bed hungry even if they hadn't eat all their dinner and their mental health is fine. Who knows how that worked out.

The way you experience your children isn’t necessarily the way they are experienced by peers, colleagues, teachers etc. Adults who don’t know how to navigate normal social situations such as meal are generally irritating to varying degrees. But glad you’ve given yourself a gold medal for parenting.

Me too!! My gs is only young (15 months) but I think expectations should be reinforced gently whilst young so there are not any issues later on. My 4dc have always been expected to remain at the table until excused. Dh is not that bothered but when our youngest (age 15) wants to slip off I'll tell her I'm still eating so she has to stay. My nephew and neice were allowed to wonder, eat sweets before dinner and even go into another room and watch TV. My eldest dc were similar ages and sometimes complained but stayed at the table. Of course you can only do this with your own dc or when grandchildren are on their own at yours. Otherwise you need to keep mum.

No idea why anyone suggests you are interfering when you have obviously been asked to look after them and are doing it for free because you're their gran. Why the hell does anyone think you can't get annoyed by it? I'd not put up with it either. But yes you are right in that most people don't seem to teach table manners or any kind of good behaviour anymore and are quite proud their kids are completely feral. Whereas I regard it as a form of child abuse to be so neglectful of their education. It does them harm in the long run. They end up damaging their own life prospects.

Yep this does irritate me but if parents do meal times like this not much you can do about it. I don't understand why parents wouldn't want an easier life by encouraging kids to sit and eat, it's definitely learned behaviour and most kids can eat a meal 'properly' if they try to (obv neurodiverse are an exception). I see so much rubbish online about it though (give them the dessert first 😑) that I can see why parents think they should just allow anything.

As a teacher of teenagers I totally agree with this. There is now so much advice about how to treat and raise children but so little evidence that any of it works, apart from the evidence in front of our faces in the emerging young adults, looking like the least resilient or happy generation so far! Most children actually really like and thrive on the predictability of structure and boundaries.

Lots of research from child psychologists and nutritionists suggests that making children eat their main meal before they’re allowed pudding actually leads to worse eating habits as it makes the dinner (usually healthier part) seem like a chore that has to be eaten to get the treat, putting pudding on a pedestal. It also means you’re asking the child not to listen to their own body and hunger cues. It’s suggested to put a small bit of desert (if you need to have one) with the main meal and say “here you go”, not place different values on different foods. Maybe his parents are doing this for a reason? Have you asked them?

As for leaving the table that’s an expectation that needs to be set up in advance, sounds like he’s not used to that at home. Maybe you need to have a chat and say at your house he should stay at the table and join in the conversation, if that’s important to you. Some children find it very hard to sit and teachers are beginning to understand more about proprioception and that different children have different ways of sitting/movement needs to help them concentrate.

I think the lack of resilience in young adults probably stems from the fact that parents are spending more and more time at work and less at home with their children (which is necessary in order to put food on the table and a roof over their heads so no judgement!), there's far, far more access to news and information that wasn't available in previous generations and that makes the world seem a far scarier place, there is little to no chance of them owning a home (or even affording rent) like previous generations had, which means that they won't be able to move onto the next stage of life such as starting a family and life looks quite bleak right now. Society has changed but expectations haven't and that's not conducive to well rounded young adults.

My grandparents generation lived through war, being evacuated, bombs dropping on their homes and neighbouring homes…they also didn’t know they would have the prospect of home ownership, nhs and other benefits brought about by welfare state…and also that generation was not as mentally unwell as the current gen z and below. Not sure your theory holds scrutiny either tbh.

I think you’re a maniac @Cosycover. How tedious mealtimes must be in your house.

I’m not Sure why this is now a discussion of mental health but perhaps someone would like to provide some hard evidence of young people being less resilient? And that grandparents generation had less mental ill health?
quite honestly I can’t blame young people for being miserable, they have much less to look forward to than my generation. I didn’t pay uni fees, got a maintenance grant so left with little debt straight into a job and bought a house in my early twenties. And that was totally normal, you could also get a decent job without uni. We’ve stuffed things up for young people they’re miserable for a reason!

Does he have ADHD I wonder, only that my DD has ADHD and cannot sit still for a meal. We pick our battles and allow her to eat her meal as she wishes. Sat at the table, or stood up, or sat on the floor. Whatever floats her boat.
She only has one option (that we know she will eat) for dinner, and we only ever give fruit for pudding, but she can eat everything in whatever order she likes.
Really there are bigger problems in the world and you getting antsy with him is not going to help him want to sit down and eat with you. Relax and model the behaviour you want calmly but don’t enforce your traditions on him. Who made up these rules anyway? I love my family but I always prefer to eat in my own company. And if I fancy dessert first, well what does it matter?