To make my 5yo feed herself or go without.

[allcorners]

My dd is 5 in fact 6 next month and never eats her dinner on her own, she will sit there for an hour and barely touch it so I end up feeding it to her just to get it down her.
If I don't she will get down and leave her meals.

Last night I refused to help her saying I wasn't feeding her anymore and she had to eat it herself.
She went without and came down several times after bedtime saying she was hungry and I said thats because you haven't eaten your dinner, you're not having anything else.

Now I feel evil for letting her go hungry. Do I do the same this evening or should I feed her if it means she gets food in her?

And another great response that focuses on why a child is doing something, not just what they may be doing.

My 5 year old dd can be a little like this when she is very tired. So she will eat breakfast and lunch very well, but get overwhelmed at dinner time, particularly after school or a big day out, and become upset, and want me to 'help' her. What works for us is giving her dinner as soon as she is home from school, when she is very hungry and hasn't become so tired. My other children eat later as they can cope with that. I'm sure she will too when she is older.

I remember watching a documentary about fostering and there was a foster dad spoon feeding a 9 year old. He said it was because she's missed out on nurturing when she was little so she was catching up, as it were. I've also seen Indian vlogger mums feed their kids sometimes much older than I would consider usual, in the context of "this is easy and quick and saves a lot of mess". I'm not suggesting you follow either approach, just that it's just one specific world view to insist children must feed themselves from age 2.

I'm sure your 5 year old hasn't missed out on nurturing, but all the same you could take a gentler path than cutting it off cold turkey. Also check her fine motor skills especially if she hasn't had much practice with cutlery in recent years. It's actually quite skilled. Imagine suddenly being told you had to eat every meal with chopsticks from now on. It would be quite exhausting, and letting you go hungry wouldn't really help you learn any faster. At the very least make sure skills are firmly in place before you start letting her go hungry over it.

But empathy, kindness and emotional intelligence do, which that poster obviously has in abundance.

Mine is the same (5.5). I’m fed up of spending hours and hours sat at the table waiting for her to finish. I heard DH telling them the TV was going off this morning at breakfast as they weren’t eating.

They don’t get unlimited snacks, they eat well at school. They refuse to use cutlery - but I know they used it beautifully at nursery because I’ve seen videos!

I don’t know what the answer is - but solidarity in spades

However, I know if I served processed shit every night of the week there would be clean plates and requests for seconds.

FYI kids - it ain’t happening because I’m not eating that every night!

We had this in my house too, we found DS would eat very nicely for DH (probably because he takes a lot less crap than I do) is her dad at home to take the lead on this maybe at the weekend even?

You've got you're answer in your posts OP. Your daughter has admitted its easier to get you to do it so you need to find a way to make eating it herself the easier option. It may take a bit of time but if she is hungry and you have confirmed no nd or additional needs then she will eat what's on offer.

They shouldn't allow her to do that.

No snacks

If isn't eating her lunch tea

I will never force a child to eat but have had slow eaters as a nanny

20m and an alarm. Another 10m and food gets taken away

And they get down. If they don't want to eat they sit and wait for their siblings to finish - not go and play

She sounds lazy as will eat if you fed her ?

Few days of not pandering /feeding her and sure she will soon

She won't starve herself, she will soon get the message that she needs to feed herself.
Pandering to it will just make it continue
You're doing the right thing OP.

You've done well to start putting boundaries in place, now make sure you stick to them.

No snacks until she's properly eating three meals a day. No feeding her at all.

If she's hungry after having refused a meal, personally I would re-offer the same meal (cold, as long as that's safe for the type of food) rather than just make her go hungry. She's only got a little stomach so it's not great to be fasting for long periods. But definitely no other snacks or foods offered, just the same meal that was left from before.

Make sure there's no tv or other screens during meal times. It can easily distract them from eating. She needs to be eating as mindfully as possible. There are ways to up this by talking about the meal - how hungry does she feel, what texture is the food, what flavour is it etc. This may help or may not, depending on what the underlying cause is. But as a minimum, there shouldn't be anything to artificially distract from the meal. Just the food and normal conversation.

YANBU. My child is the same age and behaves similarly, even though he eats everything and loads of it. I do often feed him part of his dinner though as I tell myself he’s tired after a long schoolday 🙈 he always starts by himself but seems to get easily jaded 😂

As does fostering independence and preparing your children for being adults and also preparing them for situations they may come across as children, such as having to feed themselves at school.

You certainly shouldn't be feeding her, but you need to make sure that her dinner is there and available for her when she is hungry - all she needs to do is put it into her mouth. Make sure that it's meals that don't trigger any taste or texture issues for her, and choose meals that are still palatable when cold, or which can safely be reheated as many times as it takes until she has eaten it. Absolute ban on any kind of snack foods if she hasn't eaten a proper dinner.

Can you compromise? My DD is a bit like this. She eats perfectly with a knife and fork at nursery. It's itamitent at home and prefers us to feed her. Just laziness really not a capability issue.

Can you try loading her fork up and her put it in her mouth? Or she does one mouthful and you do the next? Sticker chart for each meal and treat at the end of the week?

I definitely wouldn't back down now. It's gone on way too long. She might skip a few meals but sometimes the only way is being cruel to be kind

You've done the right thing. At 5 she is more than capable, it's just lazy. She may see you feeding her as special time with you so make sure she gets that in other ways (I'm sure you do - plenty of hugs, play time etc). I'd also be having words with school to say don't serve her pudding, unless she has eaten the main.

I used the phrase ‘testing boundaries’ so I’ll assume you’re talking to me.

She isn’t wanting help with her dinner. The OP has already said she cuts it up for her. At five years old, she understands the relationship between picking up a fork and using it to get the food from her plate to her mouth. There’s nothing to indicate that she has problems understanding this or using a fork. What she wants is for her mum to feed her. Now I’d completely agree that this is probably related to wanting some time for just her and her mum, but she IS testing boundaries by refusing to eat unless she’s fed. And, for her own sake, she needs to have those boundaries maintained. Nobody has suggested that she’s punished for doing this. Nobody has said that she should be told off or starved until she gives in. But it is a boundary that the OP needs to maintain.

I think it’s reasonable to expect a nearly 6 year old to feed themselves. Maybe she enjoyed the attention she gets when you feed her. Perhaps you could say ‘when youve eaten your dinner, we can watch a film together/draw/whatever activity she likes’ and then she still gets that attention and it’s a positive interaction. If she sits there just remind her that it would be lovely to watch the film with her so she needs to eat up so there is enough time.

Parenting isn’t about being a child’s friend. Parenting is about bringing your children up to be confident, independent adults who can go out into the world and cope on their own.

If a parent is still hand feeding their primary aged child they are unable to set appropriate boundaries and allow their child to become independent.

So yes, while it’s great to be kind, empathetic and encourage emotional development, it is also important to have and maintain appropriate boundaries and foster independence, because that is how you create emotionally healthy adults.

Mine is 4 and feeds herself and has been pretty much since she was a baby (we did BLW) so no YANBU to expect this.
PPs are probably onto something with the suggestion it’s possibly to do with wanting attention from mum, or even the need for power, rather than some eating issue in general, although it’s weird if she doesn’t eat much at school either.
Sticking to only healthy snacks (and not too close to dinner time) is a good start, you can also tell her that she’s a big girl now and needs to feed herself but she will get to do X activity with you after each successful dinner where she at least makes an effort. Positive motivation and giving her that connection with you through something else than feeding.

I'm sorry, what?

You PAID your child to EAT?

I agree with this.

Your child has some unmet need, OP. I suspect she's finding school troubling or even overwhelming, and the fact she's eating only school pudding at lunchtime there indicates she's seeking comfort through food.

Don't panic about her refusal to feed herself. Take the long view. Don't shame her over this. Try to get to the bottom of her need to be babied. Don't make it about food because it's not about food.

I'd take turns with spoonfuls, allow her to eat with her fingers, allow her to sit at a kid table if you have one, let her sit on your knee during the afternoon or evening, tell her stories about how nervous you felt when you were in Year 1 or whatever year she is currently in, how big the older kids seemed, how noisy the lunchroom seemed, how mean the dinner ladies were, etc - try to elicit some comments from her about her experience of school /teacher / playground / her peers.

While youre snuggling on the couch, talk to her about how much she's grown since she was a baby, and how much she's learned - assure her you're proud of her and can't wait to see what new things she'll learn this year, friends she'll make, and fun she'll have.

Give hugs and high fives and extra affection for independent self help like dressing, putting on jacket/ zipping, knowing where her shoes are, helping get her bag ready the night before, and give her little jobs she can do to help you so you can praise her for listening well and doing a good job.

You can gently build her confidence so that she can spread her little wings.

Be confident that she will benefit from understanding that home is her soft place to fall.

I feel there's a major element missing from your understanding of the process by which dependent babies end up fully fledged adults who are able to cope on their own.

Just carry on as you are. She eats it herself or doesn’t. If she comes downstairs hungry she gets the evening meal warmed up for her to eat herself