"you can have some sweets/ice cream/cake if you eat a good amount of your main course."

[emkana]

A reasonable approach or one that will instill eating disorders in your child?

PS A "good amount" being near enough all if reasonable child sized portion, but less than that if portion too big/adult sized.

All you smug mums with your children that eat food

He will, VVV, he will. I just don't know when. No help at all, am I?

We have had very real problems with Ds2 not eating food....he will munch happily on tissues, leaves, dirt, the Tv remote, but food no way UNTIL we tried a new trick, which goes something like this....
"It doesnt matter if you dont eat your main course because I only have one yoghurt left and I want to eat that....rule in this house is eat your main course and then you get pudding....so if you dont eat it...it doesnt matter because I will eat my supper and I get the yoghurt"....I think its called paradoxical intervention.

The little blighter finishes most of his main course every night now and wins the pud

Nothing is helping HM.

VVV dd1 doesn't each much either

Don't use food as a reward as already said than kids think one is good and the other bad - sometimes I give DS choccy buttons whilst he having his main course just to fox him and he is just as pleased to get an apple to munch on as he is to get free reign on a packet of cadburys!!

I have never done that, and I don't allow really sugary sweets, and chocolate is a very occasional (like once a week...hmmm) treat.

Ds has not got a sweet tooth at all. He refuses birthday cake! (he can eat what he wants at friends' houses, the important thing in my opinion is that he eats healthily 80% of the time and that he knows that we as a family eat certain foods, behave a certain way, etc).

I think this is just luck really, though-its worked too well!

I do this. I don't say "clean your plate". I do say "you must try everything, and eat a reasonable amount of something". Also: "if you're not hungry enough for main course, then you're not hungry enough for dessert". If there is dessert.

There's always fruit. Sometimes there's yogurt. Rarely, there's (homemade) cake, biscuits, whatever.

Both my boys eat reasonably well, although both prefer sweet stuff, I think. But they did from the beginning.

We don't insist that the DDs (3 and nearly 5) eat everything on their plates, but we don't offer alternatives, we bin whatever's left and there is no food in between meals. Pudding like life is rather random. Fruit is always on offer, yoghurt, cake, jelly make chaotic appearances. I won't offer pudding unless they have eaten most of the first course, otherwise we are offering "an alternative" and therein madness lies.

We've worked really hard with the no alternatives, eat or bin it strategy. It's the best option we've found for picking our way between the Scylla of under-feeding our initially malnourished DD2 and the Charybidis of encouraging eating disorders.