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??

My parents had lots of rules around eating. Yes I complied but I was also a fairly disordered eater which effected my health so I’m not sure the approach was the best for me as an individual. Teaching children to comply and mask and people please doesn’t really make for healthy children or adults. I’m wary of anyone saying there is one approach and if you dont follow it your children are doomed. I presume there is an issue for the parents to even be discussing with a health visitor as they don’t routinely visit after 2 (and not even then in a lot of places!). If something isn’t working then yes try something else and ask people make your own mind up. If they’re catastrophising probably best to take with a pinch of salt.

It's also why teachers are finding behaviour hard - no boundaries at home.

Years ago parents needed thier children to finish everything on the plate for valid reasons, now the advice is to listen to children when they say they're full and not encourage them to carry on eating past the point of feeling full. It's a way of tackling childhood obesity, teaching children to listen to their bodies and say when they need to stop eating.

If there's a fussy child then giving them the ability to pop back and forth to a plate of strawberries or something also gives the child a sense of control over trying new foods, and might actually work to encourage them to try new things.

It does make sense to me but you need to apply a bit of common sense with it also. So if my child eats everything but his vegetables I will say eat the broccoli or whatever. But if he leaves half a portion of lasagne on his plate and claims to be stuffed I don't force him to over eat and let him get down from the table.

If a child is struggling with eating, then letting them come and go as long as they finish the meal is absolutely the right message. Fed is best. Mine ate in short stints when she felt like it or she wouldn’t eat. It was her dietician who suggested it, because she had lost so much weight from not eating. She’s a teenager now and is perfectly capable of sitting through a meal. In fact, she shows few teenage traits, the sulking, the shouting, the wanting to be in charge. Probably because she knows we have her back and our decisions are what’s best for her.

I do wonder how anyone became a functioning adult if the stopped learning things when they turned 16.

I think the point is, no child likes restraint, yours really isn't a special case.
Nor is NinkyNonky's 'natural explorer'.
You may be happy to do what you need to to avoid conflict and keep your child happy, but you are really not parenting effectively, you are allowing the tail to wag the dog.
The problem is when natural explorers and spirited children and those who don't like restraint are put into external situations where their care givers are not so indulgent to your child's specialness.

It's unusual to still have a HV when the child goes to school, so maybe the child has some concerns which means the HV is still involved in the family.
Maybe the family member was given this advice as a specific response to some particular behaviour e.g. Mum's just had a new baby and is breastfeeding during meal time. Older kid is jealous (all very normal when a new baby arrives) and to diffuse possible difficult situation it has been suggested that just for dinner time the older child can leave the table. I don't know.....

I don't think professionals are advising that parents allow their children to do as they wish during meal times.

@Keiththecatwithamagichat l don't think anyone here is talking about eating everything on the plate or else. The issue is getting up and down from the table and messing around. Sensible parents make their children sit at the table until they have had enough, which means that once they get down from the table they have finished their food and are not allowed to sit back at the table until the next meal.

I think I’ve completely misunderstood you then. I thought you were saying that your nephew never did get down from the high chair because you had responded so scathingly to the poster who said she struggled to keep her baby in a high chair for any length of time in a cafe.

Ironically, upon re-reading your post, I think I’m probably more strict than your sibling. In my house, we all sit together to eat a meal at the point that the food is ready. The older children have to stay until everyone has finished. A toddler would be allowed to get down from the table, but their food would be taken away at that point and they would not be allowed to return for a second sitting. This all works fine for a family meal at home. It’s the waiting around for long periods in restaurants that’s the killer for toddlers.

You sound very rigid in your attitude towards little ones. It was ok for your dd to scream on the plane at take-off, but if another toddler has a panic in their high chair and needs the comfort of a parent, that’s different is it? Some babies don’t cope well with the feeling of being restricted in high chairs and push chairs etc. Toddlers are not rational and their thought process can quickly escalate from ‘I want to get out’ to a feeling of alarm and stress. You can’t reason with them like you can an older child. You can try to teach them, encourage, persuade and know that eventually the lesson will sink in.

Funnily enough my son is actually absolutely fine in both the pushchair and the car seat.

Unlike all his baby friends, he's also really compliant for nappy changes - in fact he'll get the mat, nappy etc for me, and bin everything else afterwards.

And as above, he's been socialised to clean, tidy, wash his hands, brush his hair etc. He knows the order of care routines and has helped carry them out for months.

So it's not a case of me bending to his tiny will/not putting boundaries in/not socialising him.

It's a case of him taking longer to learn this particular thing. He will learn, just like (hopefully) other children will learn to clean up and tidy like he does.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis I'm afraid you are "one of those parents"

It sounds like you are making excuses in calling your little one "a natural born explorer" because you don't have the backbone to parent him.

If you had not pandered to him he would have eventually learnt to sit at meal times or when you wanted him to

It seems that there are at least two possibilities.

One is that the health visitor is not only an idiot, but also acting unprofessionally, using their position of authority (we generally take what health visitors say seriously) to peddle their views on child development, which they are probably unqualified to pronounce on.

The other is that some important details have been omitted (e.g., "What should I do when my child goes completely nuts at mealtimes, we're at the end of our tether" / "Well, one possibility is to just let them get down from the table, I suppose") in what is now a third-hand telling of the story.

Either way, it is simply not the case that we are in some kind of "Busybody social workers going mad" scenario, where some mysterious "they" (the "globalist metropolitan elite", possibly) have decided that children should be allowed to do what they like and it's all an outrage to common sense etc etc.

There is not one profession without some people who hold contrary views. There are atheist vicars. There are doctors who think vaccines are harmful. The existence of one of two such people does not change the consensus.

That's all fine, but I think what I struggle to get my head around is how you seem oblivious to the inconvenience you are putting other people to, so say nothing of how irritating it is to other diners who want to enjoy their meal in peace.
You think you are doing what's right for your child, but you can't seem to see the effect it's having on others, who have not chosen to be 'entertained' by a toddler who 'won't' sit still.

If you've gone out to eat in a family friendly place where there is a play area and lots of kids, then you should not be surprised that there are children around. I'm not sure why it is so very disturbing to your peace to have children walking past your table. At no point did PP say that her child is clambering up onto neighbouring tables to perform a tap dance. He's simply walking about a large open space, with a parent supervising him, on his way to a suitable area to play.

If you don't like children, you are entitled not to have them, and you are also entitled to frequent places which don't allow children, but you are not entitled to a child-free world.

It was ok for your dd to scream on the plane at take-off, but if another toddler has a panic in their high chair and needs the comfort of a parent, that’s different is it?

No, it was not okay, hence it was sorted and never repeated. She was distressed, I couldn't have her on my lap (safety reasons), so I did my best to comfort her and we later explained to her why she HAD to wear the seatbelt.

Reread my posts another time, as I think you've imagined me saying children in distress shouldn't be comforted or should be restricted in any way.

And would you have felt the same BEFORE you had children?

Well if you'd read my further post, you'd have seen that we target restaurants (which is a generous definition of some of them...) that are large and spacious (e.g. 10-15ft wide open areas between tables), have play areas, and ideally keep him outside until food. And that he's not allowed near staff areas or by other tables.

I'm perfectly happy to have stuck my head above the parapet on this one, but I am still waiting for literally anyone on this thread to respond to my points about whether or not their "good restaurant behaviour" kids ever needed more support/training in learning a different skill/context.

Until someone can tell me that their child ALWAYS responded to their methods of parenting perfectly in one go for all things they learned and in all contexts, without any implications for other people in the outside world, I'm going to stick with my methods.

Honestly, thank you for replying. Because it seems very much to me like most posters on this thread are happy to tell me what a shit job I'm doing (I'm not), but are strangely quiet on the question of whether there was anything they struggled to get their child to do/learn...

Health visitor….in a school. Sure OP. I be.ieve you.

You must have enough responses for whatever article you are writing by now.

HVs generally don’t work in school, school nurses do though.

Don't know. Doesn't happen in my house. You don't have to eat everything on your plate if you don't like it or are full. But you need to try it. Plus you can't just leave the table to roam around and play

You're doing absolutely nothing wrong and the previous responses are ridiculous. We also like to eat out at family friendly places with designated play areas for kids. If you don't want your peaceful meal to be disturbed by the presence of children then you shouldn't be in chain restaurants and pubs set up for families.

If you turn up at Harvester or Hungry Horse and expect classical music, white table cloths, and well-mannered chatter at a low volume then you are the problem, not parents who have brought their kids.

DD was exactly like your DS at the same age and we used to follow her around as she explored and guide her towards a play area, then back to the table when food arrived. She is now 5 and people frequently comment on what beautiful manners she has.

Absolutely, yes, because I'm not so entitled as to think that the world is set up for my convenience.

If I wanted to go somewhere child-free, I did. I'm bright enough to be able to spot a large climbing frame in the beer garden or a box of Lego set up in the corner of a pub and know that that means there are likely to be children.

If I went somewhere more adult-oriented, a child walking around with parental supervision has never been an issue.

There's been a very limited number of occasions when I've encountered out of control kids running around, crashing into people and things, pushing over chairs and shouting. That's not acceptable and not what @TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis has described at all.

Was George Orwell being ageist?

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

How come it's ok for people to come on MN and endlessly punch down about kids and parents younger than them. Ageist, much?

I was made to sit at the table and clear my plate or it would be served up again the following day. I ended up with a pretty severe eating disorder. Meal times at our house are very relaxed, I don't make them eat anything they don't want and they certainly don't have to ask me to leave the table. They're still able to sit through a meal in a restaurant or at someone else's house, it's not all or nothing. I'm not sure why you're bothered by how people eat dinner in their own homes op.

Thank you.

As a side note, overcrowded restaurants are a pet peeve of mine. I hate having to shuffle between seats, and having small tables, uncomfortable chairs, and plates that are absolutely huge compared to the size of the table/number of chairs.

There's a chain of soft plays near Sheffield that have lovely wide open seating areas, and ACTUALLY DECENT FOOD that I wish I lived much closer too.

Maybe my spiritual dining home is a Harvester.

It goes back way before Orwell too. It has been that way for centuries.

As far as I can tell, each generation improves on past parenting. Todays young people are way better than I was at that age.

My children ask to leave the table which is nice. My mum used to get us home from school put our dinner on the table then go to work. So we never had anyone telling us where to sit or when to leave!
When we’re eating out or at someone’s house my kids will be polite about it.
I always think is it worth controlling my kid over this? Is it a hill I’m prepared to die on, would they need to do this as an adult. Well no would expect as an adult they wouldn’t need to ask permission to leave the table.