Why are we letting children call the shots?

[trivi]

Apparently the advice now is to let your child get down from the table when then feel like it during dinner etc. If they don’t feel like eating and want to play with their toys, coming and going as they please, then that should be permitted.
Please help me understand the rationale for this? And at what age should this stop? Surely this doesn’t prepare them for school? Or life in general for that matter 😅 AIBU for thinking this advice is ludicrous??

Unusual to have HV contact at this age, so much more context is needed.

If the issue is low intake of food, or there are other reasons for seeing the HV, then it may be the right advice.

'Picking your battles' has been wise parenting advice since the year dot.

Sorry this is nonsense, preschool age is what 3 or 4 ?
European 2, 3 and 4 year olds sit at a table for meal times 3 times a day. Of course NT children can be trained to do this. This book is good on this :

How old is the child?

I don't understand all this talk of forcing. Most children who are encouraged to behave a certain way from an early age don't need to be forced into a chair.

My youngest nephew was a wriggling explorer (among other things) himself. He soon learned that if you don't sit, you don't eat. You can explore while everyone else eats, and when you're good and hungry, you can sit and eat too.
No-one was spending dinner time following him around at his house, my parents' house or mine. By the time he got to a restaurant he knew to sit down and eat/draw/sleep or chat.

My rule is that if they want to eat they stay at the table. I don't get these people that chase after kids with spoonfuls of food, couldn't be arsed with that. I also can't be arsed with them going off and coming back, meals take a reasonable amount of time and then the table is cleared. If you leave then someone else might eat your food and if you didn't eat enough then there's always the next meal.

I can see that my post has a lot of responses, so to answer a few in bulk:

1. Yes, he practices at home. He's not going to learn to sit still in exciting new places without practice though, he doesn't learn that at home. He isn't going to magically learn how to sit still in a restaurant by waiting to do it when he's older.

2. By family friendly, I also mean largely empty spaces with lots of spaces between tables and play areas that we stick to. I don't let him go anywhere near staff areas or other's tables, and ideally have him playing outside or in the play area before food is ready.

3. I massively disagree that all children are natural explorers. How do I know this? Extensive involvement in early years development programmes, also knowing multiple children as well as my own. My son needs help in learning sitting still, others need help in other areas. It's also super cute that people with still/inactive children think that they don't just have a chill child as opposed to their genius parenting. There are timid kids, bold kids, eaters, drawers... My son is a mover, and has been since 8 weeks old.

4. Even strapped in, a discontented toddler can dangerously rock a highchair and scream, which is far more distracting than walking past a table holding my hand on the way to play.

I'm not defending myself here, just disagreeing with posters who think that they know for sure what I'm doing, that I'm inconveniencing other people, and that I'm raising a little heligan. I'm raising the child I have in front of me, not the imaginary one in people's heads.

You can ignore the advice can’t you.

Do you actually have any children of your own? Because you don’t sound like someone that has much practical experience of toddlers

Most of us have wild ideas on perfect parenting skills when we start out.

As long as they know how to behave when outside and when out and about that’s all that matters. I don’t really buy into any one size fits all approaches to children, as they’re not identical moulds (even within the same family).

And as for the kids that run riot in classrooms in schools etc it tend to be the ones whose parents are completely disengaged from most aspects of parenting (as well as lacking a decent home environment/community, and positive role and peer models).

This minutiae behavioural stuff hardly has an impact for good or bad. In fact numerous studies have shown that parenting styles barely affect child outcomes at all.

Is there some confusion around the advice to not force them to finish their plate? The "current advice" is to allow them to stop eating when full, and not encourage them to eat more than they need. Which is very different from the "well done, you finished your plate" attitude from my childhood.

That doesn't mean allowing them to run around at mealtimes though.

I also think some kids are ready for eating out sooner than others. If they can't do so without bothering the other diners then they aren't ready.

No that's not fair. I only have one child, 13yo. My child deserved to have the same discipline and boundaries as other children do. She did not get to make all the decisions, far from it. I know there's a stereotype of only children, it clearly doesn't seem to be changing.

I don’t think you should let him explore the restaurant. The other diners and the waiting on staff won’t appreciate a toddler running around while they have hot food in their hands. my bil and sil used to do this with huge beaming smiles as they followed their toddler wherever she wanted to go. I think they were expecting lots of cooing from the other diners and staff and were always a bit surprised when they didn’t get it. Just take some crayons, trains etc and maybe choose one with a park that you could go to for him to let off some steam if needed.

Who's advice?

There's always been tons of "advice" about parenting. Wasn't the whole child-centred hippie parenting thing a 70s invention?

You can find advice saying that your 3 month old needs to be locked in a room to cry from 7pm-7am and taught to fit in to your lifestyle how you want to live it, and you can find advice saying that if your 9 yo smacks you around the head with an ipad they are communicating big feelings and need empathy.

It doesn't mean that either of those things are a good idea.

Every single generation always has and always will one day decry how their children are parenting their grandchildren all wrong and the future of humanity is doomed.

I suppose it depends, if I'm having a long catch up dinner with my family where we're all chatting and therefore eating slowly, I don't expect my 3 year old to sit at the table long after she's finished eating with nothing to do.
We include her and give her things to play with but I wouldn't force her to sit at the table for 2 hours until the rest of us have finished catching up.
When she's older the length of time she's expected to be sat with us and her level of involvement in the conversation will increase, but for now, I don't see that there's any benefit to forcing her to sit still at the table past the purpose of eating her dinner. She'll just be bored and irritable and I won't be able to hold a conversation because I'll be managing her.

😀😀😀😀

I have been a parent for a long time. I've also actively participated in the raising of my siblings children (and grandchildren), the oldest of which is now 33. Up to and including being at their births, in their homes, them spending a lot of time in mine - so have much experience.

Of the 6 children, 4 stepchildren and 2 grandchildren; no-one has ever taken a single one exploring during meal-time; just as no-one took us exploring when we were growing up. It's a pretty standard expectation that they sit and eat.

‘I Let My Little Kids Run Wild in Public. Join Me!’ by Lucy Huber was published in the online magazine Slate on 18 March.

A couple of the smaller points the author makes are charming, IMO - children singing on the bus, for example. But overall she creates a big false dichotomy: we cool parents let our kids ‘explore’ restaurants (but they only run around appropriately), launch themselves into shopping carts at the store, dirty public fountains with their muddy toys, etc, because the alternative is a dull, stifled life that will produce a dull, stifled child.

I am so tired of this.

This is just absolute crap to say it's every "European" family though. When I was a kid we made friends with a french family and visited them at their house for holidays several times. The kids ate pastries dipped in chocolate milk for breakfast every day, ran around the garden at lunch and would leave the table to watch TV after eating, leaving the adults to finish off. This was 20 years ago. The reason we met was because the youngest son was wondering around the restaurant and we ended up chatting.

Well I won’t be doing this. Kids need to sit on their chair and eat their dinner, preferably while making polite conversation with other diners at a normal volume (lol at this bit but we’re working on it). This is what I expect from my kids and I’ll tell them to stay put and eat their dinner as many times as I have to, with consequences if they don’t (usually no pudding/fruit). Seems to be working.

There's clearly a middle ground between having no rules, no boundaries, no expectations of children - and being an authoritarian taskmaster who shames, punishes or even physically threatens children into submission. Children are not dogs to be trained. And shocker - different approaches work for different children, because they are individuals.

Gentle parenting is just a rebranding of this middle ground - authoritative parenting. It's not a fad and there is abundant evidence that is it the best way to raise children to be content, balanced, successful adults. But no, it doesn't involve letting children do exactly what they want.

This artificial dichotomy is just emphasised in the media to make you froth at the mouth and click click click.

This completely depends on the child.

My DS from about 8 months would not tolerate a high chair. He walked at 10 months and was extremely active. If put in a high chair and strapped in he would scream and cry and shout, whilst trying to rock it back and forward as he got bigger. It didn’t matter what I tried to distract him with, he hated it. It was horrible for others trying to eat a meal and I would get irritated looks from across the room.

I remember crying in the bathroom of a cafe because all of my friends’ babies would sit nicely and play with cars and crayons. Not everyone’s children are the same.

He’s four now and we’ve done a lot of work building up to him sitting properly for a meal. We sit down together for our evening meal, as well as go out for food occasionally and he does very well. But this was a long process and not about ‘boundaries’, as a baby/young toddler he just really struggled with being restrained.

I was thinking pre school 2&3, then school 4+.

I guess you must have felt worried if you needed a book to train your kids. I know a lot is luck but mine were no bother in the eating department.

I have always intended to be strict with my dc, including table manners and food, etc. However one should never made plans, as I learnt. My dc only ate a few (literally very few) things until the age of 8. I can't tell you how I bent over backwards to make them eat what there contemporaries were eating - no avail. In doing so I allowed to eat in front of the TV, in bed, in the car, on the train, alone - in my attempts to cajole, I could barely recognise myself. Invited their friends, and laid on a feast so that they would see how their friends chomp stuff and follow the example. Took the little so-and-so to restaurants, just to break the pattern. No luck. It changed at 8, but before 8 I was that disgusting, non-disciplined, condoning, annoying parent myself.

And also grow up to think they are the centre of the universe!