"No ice cream unless you eat all your peas"

[Zooropa]

I hear this sort of threat all the time when we are eating with other children. My child is still a toddler so maybe I am being BU or naive. Do you think this will become necessary as my child gets older? At the moment he eats most things, I have never made an issue about food though and if he doesn't want to eat something, it's no problem.

If your child ate no veg at all would you or do you bribe them with dessert? How would you deal with it?

I wouldn't bribe them with a dessert.

If they didn't eat their peas, then fine but that would be the end of the meal.

If dessert was available and they didn't eat their peas then I would assume if they too full to eat any more dinner then they would be too full for dessert.

It would be an entirely differnt matter if I knew that they did not like peas, in which case they would not be on their plate.

In my experience, children do get pickier as they get older and my eldest eats far less types of veg now than my other dc. I do make her eat a portion of a vegetable she likes at mealtimes though.

I don't bribe mine but I do say unless they eat all/most of their tea, they will not have a pudding.

I really dont make a big deal about it and now they are a bit older I dont even have to remind them, they know the deal.

I just keep trying with foods my fussy DD wont eat: tuna, salmon, brown bread and eggs mainly and we're getting there. I do use the "no clean plate no pudding" rule and it does work. However, if she's tried something she normally wouldn't eat I give lots of praise and allow pudding, it's about compromise and encouraging your child to eat at the end of the day .

I always said that I wouldn't do this and, mostly, we don't need to. DS is a good eater (i.e. will eat most things, doens't over/undereat) so we don't need to bribe him.

However, as he's got older (he'll be three next month), he understands that pudding follows dinner and also that food is always available, so we have done the "no pudding until you eat XYZ". The other day, we made cookies before dinner and I told him he could have one for pudding. So he ate one forkful of his dinner, said he was finished and asked for his cookie. I said no, he could have his cookie when he'd eaten a reasonable amount of dinner.

If he says he's hungry after he's had pudding (a trick he tries now and again to get more pudding!) he gets his main course back again!

Having a few reasonable rules around food is a good thing I think.

if hes too full to eat his veg , hes too full to need pudding.
Sometimes it helps him to know what the rest of us will be having for pudding so he can decide if he wants to squeeze those vegetables in .

I don't like any method that treats the pudding as a reward, or somehow ore desirable than the savoury course. The ore you use it as an incentive, the more they will see it as the main thing to be desired, and that the savoury food has to be 'endured' to get it. which seems self-defeating. So I have never done it. And DS, (who was not the world's best eater when younger) has never hankered or pestered over sweets or deserts, often eats seconds of his first course and thendeclines pudding as he is full, and i can leave sweets and choc lying around and he doesn't guzzle the up or ask f them. But i have had to stop that as visiting children fixate on the sweet jar on the side and wheedle 'can we have a sweet, can we have a sweet after our tea' and go on and on about it!

I couldn't say what is DS's natual prefernece and what is my totally laid back attitude to sweets / pudding, but it's worked for us.

I believe this is a very bad thing, it encourages children to overeat just to get the sweet treat. I have issues around food some of which I trace to this kind of behaviour. I will never use food as a reward.

On a day to day basis we have fruit as a dessert after our evening meal. If they want it my dd's have some whether they have eaten all, some or none of their meals.

The occasions we have a more substatial dessert, mostly when we have guests, are guests or have had a less substantial meal I apply the same logic as it isn't an everyday occurance so if they eat no main meal & just a dessert it is not the end of the world.

Thank you for the replies. Where I'm coming from:

I don't want ds to have issues around clearing his plate or feeling he has to eat certain things. However, I suppose we have some rules - if he doesn't have a good go at his dinner there wouldn't be anything else to eat for a few hours. I wouldn't expect him to eat everything on his plate or even try everything, but he's have to eat more than just a few mouthfuls. Otherwise - it would be fine, but no more food offered until the next meal.

We don't have dessert at home, unless it's fruit, so if we go out and he wants dessert I would let him unless he literally hasn't TOUCHED his dinner, Because it is a one off (we maybe go out once a fortnight). Also I don't only have dessert if I've eaten everything - sometimes I just don't want any more savoury but fancy some ice cream!

So I'm probably being naive thinking I can continue with this philosophy, I just can't get my head around trying to make them clear their plates. Sounds like I may have to rethink when he's older though.

Cross post Blu - you put it much better than me :)

Just realised I'm thinking in a similar way to loonyrationalist - sorry, I missed your post.

and Blu!

Once, when he was about 3, DS was eating spag bol and spied some choc buttons on the worktop, and asked for them. To the open-mouthed horror of the assembled company I reached the packet, gave him two or three and put the packet away, he ate them and happily went back to his bowl of spag bol.

There weren't any other children pesent...not sure what I would have done in that case - possibly said 'oh look, enough in the packet for half each' and given the all half a button before making a play of throwing the 'empty' packet in the bin!

I think blu and loony are right, anything that encourages DC to eat more than they want is surely madness in a time of rising child obesity.

We don't generally have pudding at home, but on the odd occasion when we do, I let DD have it before she finishes her main meal if she likes. Then if she's still hungry after pudding, I say she can have some more of her dinner. That way I reckon at least she's eaten according to her appetite and no more.

Having said that, with just ice cream she'd be hungry again an hour later. A stodgy pudding though, fine.

But by far the easiest way to get around this issue is just not having sweet stuff in the house at all - sadly for me