Finding it hard to avoid food battles

[handbagofoblivion]

I'm quite cool about if one day DC won't eat their veg or next day doesn't want any meat.

But we seem to have endless battles about silly things, particularly like how many gherkins/how much ketchup DS has.

Typically, it goes like this. I let him serve himself ketchup, he takes several, I say 'thats enough', he keeps serving, I say 'that's too much now' he keeps serving so I grab the bottle. He then says 'we're not allowed to snatch Mum!'

Any advice. He is just 7.

Stop letting him fix his own plate for a week or two. Tell him he'll only get the privilege back when he stops playing silly buggers.

So you do think it is acceptable to 'control' the amount of sauces etc?
It's so confusing, you're not supposed to control the amount of normal food IYSWIM

They're never too young to learn portion control

Ketchup and gherkins are loaded with salt. As long as you allow him free access to healthy stuff, there's no issue with reasonably limiting these sorts of extras.

I suppose I need to make it clear to him that they are a bit like sweets ie they taste good, ok in small quantities but no real nutritional value.

We don't often have things like sweets in the house so when they're gone, they're gone, but difficult to do that with condiments without penalising other people in the family.

Unless we all have our own jars of everything!

Yeah but ketchup's not normal food, its sugar and vinegar. You'd have no problem 'snatching' your glass of wine away from him