Mindee has taken nearly 2 hours to eat lunch!!

[MrsPotato]

including 45 minutes to eat 2 carrot sticks!!

Mindee is 2.5 and is getting slower and slower. Lunch was 3 carrot sticks, a boiled egg and a slice of toast. Satsuma and. Yogurt for afters.

We started at 11.30, has only just finished and gone for a nap. Breakfast took an hour!

Mindee is a good eater, not fussy, eats normal portions. I don't think what I served was too much. Breakfast lasting an hour was not a problem although it meant mindee missed a bit of the morning home based activity.

But parent wants mindee to have 2 hours sleep in the afternoon, which has to end by 2.30 for the school run. Mindee will only get 1 hour now and be quite miserable as I will have to wake them. Parent says mindee does not take long to eat at home.

What do I do? Will tea have to start at 3.30?!! What is going on?!

Difficult that its a minder and not your own child, as ds1 used to show these traits until I started taking his meal away and making him wait until the next one, this after forty five minutes of farting around which I cannot bear to watch.

Slow eating drives me nuts. I know it's healthy not to gobble but seriously, I have to have time to wash the pots between the damn meals!

she is taking that long because you allow her to!! 2 hours sitting eating lunch, sorry op but how have you got the time for that?? have you not got other things to do? what are the others doing while she is eating?
give them all the same amount of time. if she hasn't eaten, she isn't hungry.

i did the same as blondes

we always allowed (at least) half an hour..... the meal finished when my watch did its hourly beep / and when the hand was at the top....

quite simply as soon as we herd the beep what wasnt eaten went in the bin and nothing else until next meal

doing this for about a week worked for my then 2 year old.

he knew what would happen, and it didnt take him long to get back into eating at normal speed, at which point we didnt need to clock on the table, (but could point to it on the wall on "slow" days)

it worked for my charge (and had complete back up from parents)

Sounds like you have been more than patient, your mindees and parents are v lucky imo.

My DD1 (4) sometimes takes an age to eat meals, have agreed with my CM on a time limit for meals and snack limitation, CM was being very accommodating, DD1 was taking the piss!

Dd2 is picky and sometimes doesn't eat, but eats better at the CMs that at home, not sure why, suspect is because I give in and give her snacks.

I had a mindee that took an age to eat. Found out that at home this child was being fed in front of the tv. Not something we do here. Even though we didn't like it we allowed her to watch something on a laptop or we read to her but this only worked for a short while. The mum was very distraught about her not eating as the child was a bit unconventional as that she was here for an hour before going home for a hour and a half before coming back to us. (was only our 2nd mindee at the time and we live and learn, wouldn't do that again). She was "having to feed her" when she was home when it was a time she wanted to use for preparing for work. We offered to feed her with the food that we prepare for the others but the mum was of the opinion of "what's wrong with my food?" nothing wrong with it but the mindee was maybe wanting what the other children were having. She was the same age as your mindee. Unfortunately it never did get resolved as she has only been in 2 times since September (another story)