Did other parents do this to their young kids in the 80's?

[ihatethecold]

When I was 4/5/6/ my mum would sit next to me at the dinner table if I was refusing to finish something on my plate. If I left my peas she would sit and bang the table rhythmically and say the Eat, Eat , Eat each time her hand hit the table. She didn't do this really loudly but she was persistent with it.

I remember hating it and trying to eat the food I'd left. One time she did this when she had made me scrambled eggs.
I couldn't eat it all so she started banging the table and saying Eat. I remember then finishing the food and 5 mins later I was sick everywhere.

This isn't/ wasn't ok was it?

Did other parents do this?

I never realised really how weird it was until I tell my kids things that used to happen to me.... They do comment that I had a weird abusive upbringing.

Ive had tons of therapy for what they put me through but i've never spoken about this in counselling.

Yes. It’s called the clean plate rule. My mom did this. And it’s extreme to the point that I have fallen asleep into a plate of gravy as I refused to eat. Both myself and my siblings have eaten food from the dogs mouth because we tried to feed our food to the dog and my mom caught us and prized it from the dogs jaws and forced us to eat it.
So messes up when I look back from my 40 yr old perspective. I would never force my children to eat when they obviously didn’t want to.
I’m definitely not okay with my past

Abusive and cruel. Sorry you went through that.

Thats awful Op.

Me and my siblings are 80s born and my parents did'nt do this.
We were told if we didnt eat all our dinner, we wouldnt have pudding .
We always ate majority on our plates and always had pudding anyway- we were never forced to eat though

Not even remotely normal behaviour.

I'm surprised you didn't end up with an eating disorder.

I had to finish everything on my plate before I could leave the table at home.

I also remember being forced to sit at the table at nursery for hours because I wouldn't drink their rancid, curdled milk.🤢

The attitude your mother displayed was another level entirely. 💐

No. That’s sounds awful, op.

I am so fussy over certain foods myself, which stems from being made to eat school dinners, and drink the school milk, etc (I still can't drink milk on its own, and I am now retired).
So, when my DC were young, I vowed never to make an issue over food. I may not always have got this right, and sometimes my DH may have made one of the DC eat something, but this generally worked.
One thing, I always sat at the table, and we all ate our meals together (even though this meant I often ate early, when the DC were very young). My DH was often home very late, so i did not wait for him.

I grew up in the 80's and my mum would force me to eat frozen celery which I hated.

She would force feed me it with a fork and not let me leave. She denies it.

I was also forced to eat porridge every morning before school which I didn't want and again was forced to eat and i never eat breakfast now.

I’m so shocked and sorry for all of you who experienced these things. The vomiting ones especially would be classed as very serious abuse today

I was a child in the 80s and my mum encouraged us, like everyone did unfortunately at the time, to clean our plates - I still have a compulsion to do this and it hasn’t helped with overeating and portion size. I have never made my DD do this as a result, and she’s far better at regulating her own appetite than I am.

But I was lucky too in that my mum is a very good cook, and the food we had was pretty much always good so I didn’t really find it unpalatable ever (apart from our own specific likes/dislikes). Despite that I never heard or saw any of this kind of abuse — even in primary school where they might ask you go back to eat a bit more mash or whatever before you were allowed to scrape your plate, but ultimately didn’t force you to eat if you really didn’t want to.

Some of the practices described in this thread really are horribly abusive - the chanting, and making children eat cold congealed food, sound like prisoner torture tbh. Hugely damaging and counterproductive

(I should say too that one of the reasons my mum learned to cook well was that she had horrible experiences around eating food herself in her own childhood in the 50s, so was keen for us not to have the same.)

No, but we were expected to clear our plates. All vegetables to be eaten. At school it was the same - clean plates. I still do it now - clear my plate, whereas my husband is always leaving half eaten plates of food, which I find somehow disgusting!

Not the banging but even my laid back in all other ways parents were pretty persistent about getting us to finish food. I remember a discussion with my mum when dd12 was about 4 and she still seemed to think dc should finish what they were given and she's so forward thinking in other ways with a wealth of childcare training. Was an assessor for early years and okay work qualifications until retirement. Odd!

but try to appreciate that the world was a very different place and if you were worried about food cost, paying bills, heating the home and having electricity etc

Doesn't sound very different at all, in fact this is an exact description of my life just now and set to get very much worse. I won't force my dc to eat what they don't want. I do get attitudes were different and it was the norm but what you've listed is currently exactly the same for so many right now

Attitudes to food were different in the 80s. Money wasn't an issue when I was growing up, but It was very much expected that I ate everything on my plate. My DM was very gentle but firm about it, and somehow I ended up with an eating disorder for a few years. I still struggle to leave food on my plate. I was very upset when my DM gently set about getting DD to eat everything on her plate (although I didn't feel the same way about DS- as you can tell I have issues ), although DM learned to let my DC serve themselves so they knew not to take too much at her house. DM experienced rationing as a child, and during lockdown thought she had to live off meagre rations

Forcing strongly encouraging a child to eat was probably considered good parenting in those days, and wouldn't have been recognised as abusive, although we now understand it is. Dinner ladies were quite insistent all food was finished. I used to eat my friends food at school so they wouldn't get into trouble. Back in 1978 at infant school not eating your school lunch was considered a worse offence then saying something racist.

I have already answered earlier, but want to reiterate that it was the school that did this to me, not my parents, even though we were not well off at all.
And it was BOTH primary and secondary.
At primary, I never got a morning playtime, as we were forced to drink milk, which I never finished (when drinking through a straw, you get the cream at the end). So once playtime had ended, and if I was at least halfway through the milk, I was allowed to leave the rest.
Then it was the dinners. No choice and absolutely disgusting; if you have heard about lumpy mashed potatoes, and bullit peas, then this was it. (I never took the slice of 'brown leather' roast meat, but they insisted on me eating the rest). I just could not do it. I used to wonder why they mashed the potatoes, and not leave them as whole, and also how they made it lumpy. Now as an adult, I realise it was reconstituted powder!!!!.
Secondary school was even worse!. They made you take it, and then could not understand why you did not want it. This is true. You could not just have the potato for example. They would insist you took the meat pie, etc, and monitored the bins to make sure you did not leave it. (This drove me into declaring myself a vegetarian, although I am not really)
I wanted to take a packed lunch, but it was some years before I could pursuade my parents; and then I prepared it myself.

@Tamworth123

I remember the primary school headmaster thumping his son (a pupil) really hard in the upper back because he hadn't eaten all of enough (not sure) of his food (in his opinion). It was in front of the entire school. Sometime in the 80s.

He also slapped my legs for being "cheeky" on at least one occasion that I can remember.

He is a prominent and "upstanding" member of the local church, always has been.

Yes, punishment at our primary school was to be hit with a metre ruler in front of the class. This was the 80s too.

Wow, I was a very good eater as a kid but my brother was fussy. For my mum, eating most was ok but my dad was of the no waste and clean plate brigade. He grew up in the Spanish civil war, he was lucky he had enough food, repetitive but enough, but he saw people go seriously hungry and he couldn´t stand the waste. I was 6 in 1980. My brother chucked his meat over the terrace to the grass below and my dad made him go pick it up put it back on his plate and eat it. He would get the left overs for tea and then for supper if he didn´t eat it first time (if my dad was there) my mum didn´t do this. Luckily for my bro, my dad worked till late. I never put large portions on my daughter´s plate. I rather she asks for more, and when she says she is full, she is full. I think it is important we learn to recognise we are full and stop eating as a safeguard against being overweight when older. I think your mum´s and my dad´s styles although different would have caused everyone else at the table anxiety, who wants that?

@Heidi451 Oh I have this! I clear my plate, and if we have a salad bowl I make sure there is none left, my husband leaves half on his plate, a little of the salad, that is not enough to keep and I would have to throw away. Eat the three leaves and the one olive for goodness sake! My father would have a heart attack! I also find the half eaten stuff on the plate disgusting. Guess it is a hangover from my father´s attitude to food.

Philip Larkin had it right didn’t he just? I’m sorry OP it sounds awful. I was forced to eat something horrible and then threw up on the table but only remember that happening once.

@PerseverancePays

Some people should never have had children. What she did to you was abusive She sounds nuts.

The sad thing is it sounds like a significant portion of the population.

I could be wrong but one thing I think that contributed to this sort of shit parenting (which would now be correctly seen as anusive) in the 80s for example is that ,alongside the residual tradition of an authoritarian, punitive, dominant etc attitude toward children, the parents were often quote young. Younger on average then now. To me, sometimes, it was like kids raising kids. I feel like they didn't have a maturity and life experience and perspective to be moderate, see the wider picture etc.

I don't mean extreme, disgusting, abusive things mentioned here like forcing kids who'd vomited to eat vomit; but the milder stuff. They msy often havw veen quite immature (which I think many ppl still are on their 20s, even early 30s sometimes) and were influenced by their parents 50s style parenting.

It's no excuse, just a reason I think the current later patenting trend is probably a good thing in some ways

Op's mother's banging and chanting is still bat shit though.

Very anxiety & stress producing; you have to be mad or very very dumb not to be able to see that.

Interesting (and tyoical) how many posters' parents are now lying about their behaviour.

Guess they think worh so much time passed, and the posters having very kids, they might get away with lying.

They probably also convince themselves

It says a lot about their characters, and shows theyre still the same unreasonable, irresponsible, low integrity ppl who did those things in the first place.

*having been kids

No, not a thing I ever heard of

I definitely have to stop myself repeating my parents behaviour with my own children. They weren't as bad as some parents on here but there were certain meals cooked that we disliked and had to sit and finish them.

I have mixed thoughts about this. I do get annoyed with my children for not trying certain foods, a small mouthful is enough and they have a bad habit of saying they are full and then wanting food an hour later. So I do encourage them to eat a bit more.

I don't give pudding unless a reasonable amount of food has been eaten. But they don't have to clear their plate.

If they are hungry later after the evening meal they can have an apple or milk but no more if they haven't eaten.

I won't cook different meals but if one of them doesn't like X and does like Y, then I will just serve up Y.

I find it very difficult and I guess I have a fear of easing fussy eaters which, baring sensory issues, I have little patience with.