What works for slow eaters/mucking about

[Bearcrumble]

DS 3.5ys is not a fussy eater but he will take forever to finish a meal and if we take our eyes off him he will be scraping the table with a fork or attempting to squish a tomato into it.

I am fed up. I'd like mealtimes to be relaxing, not like a bloody chimps tea party.

DS1 is like this. He is also a fussy eater . I have taken to leaving the food there for maximum of half an hour and then its just taken away, no fuss, no comment. Hopefully one day soon he will get the idea to eat it in reasonable time or go hungry til the next meal. If he ever decides to ask for more then I will just offer it back. He never has yet though...

I think perhaps we are in a vicious circle - he mucks about, we tell him not to, he slows down, we tell him to eat up then everyone gets pissed off and nothing positive happens.

I will try ignoring it for a couple of days and setting a time limit on meals and what isn't eaten gets binned.

(and stopping unhealthy snacks of biscuits/ice creams etc).

watching with interest...chimps tea party here and I am sick of shouting!

I was a very slow eater as a child. I can remember sitting in the lunch hall aged 5yo and all the other tables had been cleared away, all the children were back in their classrooms.

I didn't do it on purpose and if hurried I used to get quite anxious. My parents were actually very good at not msking it into a big deal for me. Possibly not what you want to hear.

If I were you I would praise good table manners, try to have some sort of conversation at the table that takes the focus off him...and wait for it to pass.

My appetite drastically increased when I got to Key Stage 2 and then I was the speediest eater on the block!

I think it was that he was full of snacks. Last two dinner times have been great - he did make a fuss yesterday after nursery because I wouldn't let him eat his leftover lunch bits on the way home but he ate all his dinner without fuss or mess. Today he left one thing on his plate but ate the rest well so we accepted it was something he didn't fancy.