5

Mealtime

Plenty of families struggle to manage behavior at the kitchen table. Siblings bicker, picky children complain about the menu choices, and we all wolf down our food in order to get to our next scheduled activity. You may find yourself fondly recalling the days of idyllic family mealtimes, with everyone sitting around the table, using their best manners, all happily eating the same freshly prepared food. For many of us, that may likely now be a rare occurrence rather than the norm. But it’s understandable that frustration sets in when, inbetween volleyball games, dance recitals, kids complaining about the vegetables, and one or more parents working late, dinnertime doesn’t work out the way you’d planned.

It’s okay; idyllic may not be what you should strive for every night. We’re advocates of setting realistic expectations for mealtimes and finding ways to enjoy stress-free meals with whichever members of your family happen to be home. Quality family bonding time can take place at any meal, regardless of whether you’re sitting around the table using the fancy china or standing up at the kitchen counter getting ready to dash back out the door as soon as everyone’s done. Regularly sharing time together with your children is what’s important; it’s what facilitates communication, contributes to your positive relationship, and reduces problems.

Regularly sharing time together with your children is what’s important.

Manage Mealtime Meltdowns

Peaceful meals begin with good preparation, and we’re not just talking about planning menus and chopping vegetables. When it comes to the family kitchen, we go back to managing the series of contributing factors that lead to a behavioral problem. This is where you’ll find the keys to being stress free. The goal is prevention of problems before they begin.

We have to do our part and role-model a good frame of mind by not adding to problems. This starts by not carrying stress from our day into mealtime. We’re all rushed for time in trying to put dinner on the table after school or work, and that distress can easily carry over into lowered tolerance and less patience for our children.

In focusing on tantrums in Chapter 3, one of the first questions we advocated asking yourself was whether your child was hungry or overtired. A hungry child may be driven to distraction and display behavior problems more than a child who isn’t hungry. This is more of a balancing act at mealtime, though, because you want your children to be hungry when they sit down to it. But if they’re “starving” for the half hour before, they’re more likely to get into trouble. A light snack can help settle them down into your mealtime routine and tide them over without sapping their appetite.

Offer healthy snacks that literally fuel your child through his or her activities.

Effectively managing mealtime is also a matter of good decision making about snacks and drinks throughout the day. Offering healthy snacks that literally fuel your child through his or her activities—school, extracurricular, playtime—works best for both nutrition and discipline. Limiting the empty calories of junk food and the caffeine in sodas goes a long way toward better behavior. Many parents have started planning for five light meals throughout the day instead of three larger ones, which only works if your child’s school allows a snack time. This may work better for those children who are hungry all the time. Whatever the choices you make around your family’s nutrition, use the Universal Strategies of role-modeling, giving good directions, and enforcing limits and rules to ensure that the lead-up to every meal is as positive and peaceful as possible.

Finally, you also need to manage distractions while your family eats. Keep the television off, don’t answer the house or cell phone (it’s most likely a sales call anyway), and institute a “no screens at the table” rule. Make sure you follow this rule as well as a good role-modeling strategy.

Establish a Mealtime Routine and Use Redirection

Like homework, engineering successful mealtimes is partly a matter of establishing routines and habits. Consistency of routine in general is a good behavior management strategy: Consistent routines are far less likely to provoke a behavioral issue than changes in routine. Children thrive on knowing what’s coming next, and these years when they are young are the time for you to establish the habits that will last them through their lives. Eventually, a routine becomes ingrained into the brain of a child until it’s simply second nature.

Your family may have busy schedules that make the “dinner at six o’clock every night” routine difficult. But it’s not impossible to have a routine; you just have to find out how one works best for your family’s schedule and situation.

One way to do this is to keep a family calendar of events. Variations on a schedule or absences of one parent or child can be anticipated so that mealtime doesn’t dramatically differ from one day to the next. A general time frame of, for example, dinner between 6:15 and 6:45 can still become an established routine. If one parent works late every Wednesday, and Thursday is basketball practice, then the routine flexes to accommodate those weekly changes. After a few times, that flex itself becomes routine. It may make the most sense to update your calendar each year when school starts and then recalibrate as one extracurricular season ends and another begins. Some families find that reviewing the schedule on a weekly basis with their children allows everyone to be prepared as well as to provide input as to whether something has changed or can be managed differently.

And then there’s the routine and habits of the meal itself. These serve double duty when it comes to discipline, offering both consistency and fodder for using the redirection strategy. Having a hungry child waiting to eat is a recipe for problems, so keep him busy in the lead-up to the meal. Involving your child gives him a sense of responsibility and an investment in the activity of mealtime.

A hungry child waiting to eat is a recipe for problems, so keep him busy.

Begin by having him help with just one mealtime chore—the more regularly scheduled, the better. You can slowly add a chore every so often until a reasonable level is reached. Make sure that whatever duties you assign are developmentally appropriate (for example, some 7-year-olds can handle breakable dishes carefully, but others can’t). Expecting a child to perform something unpleasant or uninteresting by himself may be asking for failure, so take some time to teach him how to do the chore successfully. Coaching and practice sessions are strategies that will help. Here are some suggested mealtime chores, by age level, that you can consider for your children:

• Most 3-to-6-year-olds can get out silverware, fold napkins, and put condiments (salad dressing, ketchup, salt and pepper) or other such items on the table.
• Most 7-to-9-year-olds can set the table, crack an egg, mix ingredients, and carry plates.
• Most 10- and 11-year-olds can cut up vegetables (always supervise knife use!), use the toaster/microwave, pour beverages, and do the dishes.

Let’s say that your children need to clear the table after dinner. Be sure you give them good directions and role-model this behavior when they are younger and first learning it. This can also help to embed a natural incentive: Once the dinner plates are cleared, we can bring out dessert. A good cleanup routine for a family with multiple children assigns each a job. Eight year-old Diego brings the plates over to the sink, 10-year-old Cristina rinses them and puts them in the dishwasher, and little Isabella who’s a preschooler, takes care of the cups. Keep the chores consistent and make sure they all understand that if one person isn’t doing his or her job, it affects everyone: no dessert or TV time until the entire table is cleared.

If your family has mealtime traditions, such as saying Grace, you can involve your children by having each family member take turns at it. Selecting background music for your meal can be another rotating job, if it’s something your family enjoys, but make sure to set parameters for those choices or you might end up with something that’s not exactly conducive to a peaceful meal.

The last part of the routine can be very important from your child’s perspective: the seating arrangement. Whether or not your family uses assigned seating, either formally or informally chosen, where a child is sitting can be of utmost importance. Siblings may need to be separated with a parent in between. One seat may be closer to something desirable, or be located in a less-advantageous spot than another, and this can cause competition. You can institute assigned seating at any time. However, a change in seating arrangements can also lead to behavior problems, so keep an eye out in this area.

Institute Rules and Use Reinforcement and Restitution

Hand in hand with mealtime routines are your family’s rules. These can include basic table manners such as saying “please” and “thank you,” sitting at the table until excused, and using utensils. Try to keep the list relatively short, because overwhelming children with too many requirements will be counterproductive. Use the coaching technique of reminding your children about rules they may have trouble remembering or sticking to during the time you’re preparing the meal. Keep your tone instructive instead of fussy or corrective.

Here are a couple of examples of the coaching strategy regarding mealtime rules:

1. “Last night, I noticed that you were chewing your dinner with your mouth open. That’s really not polite, and it’s something I want you to try very hard to make sure you don’t do. I’ll remind you if I see you doing it today. I know you’ll soon be able to remember this yourself.”
2. “When you spilled your milk, I noticed you were trying to pass the salad to Mommy. I want to see you keep your cup further up on the table instead of right on the edge. Also, when someone asks you to pass him or her something, hand it to the person next to you who will pass it along. That’s a lot safer and will help avoid another spill.”

Eventually, your child will start to remember these rules. They will become habits, and you won’t have to issue reminders.

Juxtaposed with your rules are those behaviors that you may decide to ignore, at least for the time being. Make your determination based on your child’s age, of course, but the strategy of ignoring can be a good one to help keep the peace at the table. This strategy is based on the removal of reinforcing attention so that you don’t inadvertently give your child a reason to repeat the behavior.

Pick your battles, and prioritize where you will spend your parenting energy.

You may choose to ignore little behaviors that can be annoying but are not against your rules per se. Pick your battles, and prioritize where you will spend your parenting energy and what you will ignore. A child talking a little too loud, mildly playing with his food, or being picky about making sure the different foods on the plate don’t touch are all examples of behaviors that some parents choose to ignore at mealtime. Proactively pair your decision not to comment on these behaviors with the strategy of praise and positive attention when they talk in an appropriate voice, eat all their food without playing with it, and try a food even when it’s touched another.

Praising your child for getting it right makes it more likely she will repeat that behavior. It also makes it obvious when you’re ignoring something she’s doing and makes the act of ignoring have meaning for your child.

Be specific, so that your praise reinforces the exact behavior you want them to keep doing.

Find behaviors to praise throughout the meal. Be specific in telling your children what you like seeing, so that your praise reinforces the exact behavior you want them to keep doing: talking nicely, waiting their turn, trying a new food, using their napkin, and saying “please” and “thank you.” Even if mealtime has been a real problem in your family, if you look hard enough, you’ll find opportunities to use praise.

Looking for those opportunities means paying attention, which will help you continue to manage problem behavior triggers and step in with redirection when necessary. (The act of praising itself can be redirection if it causes one child to pay attention to something new instead of to what was bothering her.) Staying positively engaged with kids through ongoing attention and praise also helps reduce opportunity for provocation of a behavior problem.

Behaviors such as arguing or fighting with a sibling during the meal may mean you have to take your response up a notch. Some of these behaviors might overlap with your Absolutes, so you need to use your predetermined response. “There is no hitting in this family, Jason; you need to take a Time-Out. I’ll set the timer for five minutes and when you’re calm you can rejoin us at the table.”

After the five minutes is up, and your child comes back to the table (assuming he’s calm and ready to rejoin the group), you don’t need to dwell on his problem behavior. Just have him apologize to the person he hit and then resume the meal as usual. If you have other children, use the Time-Out to explain that they don’t need to escalate the situation any further.

For those times when all of your children are involved in an episode of bad behavior at the table, a negative consequence in which they all feel some discomfort or a natural consequence of apology and restitution is most effective. Here are two examples:

1. “You both just said some very mean things to each other, and that’s not okay. I know you’re hungry, but we’re going to have to delay dinner now until your Time-Out is finished. Or can you both apologize to each other right now.”
2. “Accidents happen. You need to get the paper towels to clean up, and I’ll get the mop. Mac-’n’-cheese sure makes a big mess on the floor; we should all try to be more careful next time.”

It goes without saying that messes are inevitable at mealtime. Accidents are going to happen, and sometimes often. Restitution in these cases means cleaning up, regardless of whether it was an act of bad behavior or an accident that caused the mess. Restitution is not a punishment; it’s simply a natural consequence. While it may be inconvenient for your child and may motivate him to be more careful in the future, the main lesson you’re teaching is that everyone cleans up a mess they have made.

Get Your Children to Eat New Foods

“I don’t like that!”

“I want something else!”

“I won’t eat it; I guess I’ll just starve!”

We’re guessing you’ve heard these phrases, or others like them, at mealtimes. Up until now, how have you responded? Going forward you should consider the context of ABC—antecedent, behavior, consequence—as it applies to these kinds of situations. Antecedents are those contributing influences that can lead up to a behavior. Behavior is what the child does. Consequence is what happens after the behavior that makes it more or less likely that it will happen again. Let’s take a look at some scenarios.

Scenario One: Like many moms, Ada is trying to get her family to eat more vegetables. She decides to try green beans and makes a family recipe that she learned to love as a child. Both children take one look at what’s on their plates and immediately express their disgust, loudly. Ada bristles because they are insulting her family recipe, they really need the extra nutrition, and they haven’t even tasted it before deciding they don’t like it. She tells them that vegetables are good for them and they’ll just have to eat it.

Antecedent: Mom wants to try a new vegetable, but the kids don’t like vegetables.

Behavior: The kids express disgust and demand something else to eat.

Consequence: Mom forces her kids to eat the green beans. They believe that Mom doesn’t care about or listen to their feelings, and resent being forced to eat. This consequence reinforces their negative association with vegetables (possibly with new foods in general), but also reinforces mealtimes as an adversarial situation of Mom versus the kids. They are more likely to dislike vegetables in the future.

Scenario Two: Here’s a tweak in the consequence. Ada, concerned about making sure her kids actually eat, switches midstream and fixes something she knows they’ll eat even though it doesn’t contain a vegetable.

Antecedent: Still the same.

Behavior: Still the same.

Consequence: Ada’s children learn that complaining and demanding gets them what they want, which reinforces their behavior and makes it more likely they’ll do it again. Her goal of broadening their palates is now farther away than it was 10 minutes ago, and she’s set herself up to be a short-order cook, preparing different meals for the kids.

Scenario Three: Here’s another twist. While Ada still bristles at her children’s reaction to the green beans, she takes a deep breath, ignores the insult, and reminds them that the rule in their family is that they take a taste of everything on their plates.

Antecedent: Still the same.

Behavior: Each child takes a taste of the green beans. Neither pronounces the dish delicious, but the girl states to her brother, “It’s not so bad.” Ada’s daughter has just reinforced the idea of trying new foods for both herself and her brother.

Consequence: Ada praises her children for trying the green beans, with some special attention to her daughter. Her children learn that they get praise when they try new foods, at least one child is on the path to potentially liking green beans, and it’s more likely that they’ll try the sweet potatoes Ada has planned for a dinner next week.

These simple scenarios will unfortunately not be the magic formula to getting your kids to eat more vegetables; the reality is there’s no secret sauce for that. However, when you use your knowledge of the ABCs and apply them to eating behaviors, along with positive reinforcement efforts, you’ll be on your way toward achieving your goals.

The fact is that kids don’t like things that are unfamiliar. That’s really at the core of a new-food resistance. Nutritionists will tell you that it can take offering a particular food anywhere from 12 to 20 times before your child learns to like it, but suggest you should keep trying so your child builds familiarity with that food. After a number of exposures, the food is no longer “new,” your child is becoming accustomed to its taste, and his resistance is diminished. With the expectation that your child simply tries a new food, and using positive reinforcements and praise when he does, you’re raising the odds that he’ll learn to like the food sooner rather than later.

It can be frustrating to prepare something you know the kids won’t eat.

It can be frustrating, not to mention a waste of valuable time, to prepare something you know the kids won’t eat. Remember the keys to keeping mealtimes stress free, and know that it’s okay to take shortcuts. Plan for your kids to only eat a bite or two, and prepare just a small amount of the new food for the adults at the table. You can even have a rule that your child must “try” a new food 15 times or so before expressing that he truly doesn’t like it. Be a role model by eating and enjoying the new food. Only try a new food once a week or once a month if that makes it easier.

Think about your child’s nutrition in terms of weekly intake instead of daily intake. This reduces the worry if they don’t eat more than a tiny bite of a green bean on Wednesday but happily scarf down the broccoli with cheese sauce on Saturday. You might even solicit input from your children about what new foods to try. To do this, take a look at all the offerings at the grocery store and ask the produce manager to describe the tastes and origins of each. Additionally, you can ask your kids to poll their friends to find out their favorite veggies, and then put those into your rotation. If you really hit on something they just aren’t going to like, perhaps then you consider allowing them to choose from a short list of substitutes in advance so you don’t become that short-order cook we discussed.

When it comes to creating good eating habits in kids, there are a few don’ts:

• Don’t force your children to eat all of something they don’t want to eat. While this crosses into nutritional and medical issues, from a behavioral perspective forcing it creates a negative association and can ultimately backfire into more eating refusal or, taken to the extreme, raise the risk for a serious health issue, such as an eating disorder. Positive reinforcement of good eating behaviors is what is effective in promoting healthy choices.
• Don’t shame or criticize your child’s food choices or weight. Even at the young ages we’re discussing in this book, shame cuts to the bone of a child’s self-esteem and can cause more serious problems than not choosing the healthy food.
• Don’t indulge a child’s super-picky eating habits by catering exclusively to her whims or demands. It’s a parent’s job to offer a healthy variety of foods, and it’s a child’s job to decide which to eat. Continuing to offer everything the entire family is eating to a picky eater will eventually—it may take months or even years—allow them to grow out of their pickiness.
• Don’t worry that your child will starve, vomit, or otherwise be put in danger if you don’t feed them their favorite foods all the time. Kids eat when they’re hungry. Talk with your pediatrician if you’re really concerned, but once reassured, use your ignoring strategy for any of your child’s dramatics. If he receives attention for reacting with a gagging reflex, then he’ll act that out more often with foods he doesn’t like, so ignore it. If he sees you get upset and fix him a different meal when he says he’s starving, then he’ll cry starvation all the more often.

It’s a parent’s job to offer a healthy variety of foods, and it’s a child’s job to decide which to eat.

Develop Strategies for Eating Out at Restaurants

Now that we’ve worked on some mealtime problems at home, and you know how to apply the ABCs to food-related behavior, it’s time to take on one of the most difficult tasks known to parents: taking the kids out to eat at restaurants!

It’s not really all that hard, but it certainly can be stressful. If even the thought of taking your kids to a restaurant stresses you out, try using the coaching and practice session strategies in advance to get your kids ready. You can try taking one child at a time to a restaurant at a non-busy time of day (try 2:00 p.m.), or even have fun playing restaurant at home, with your kids being the waiters and you taking on the role of your children at the restaurant.

Remember to be specific about what’s going to happen: “We will sit at a table, and a waiter will come and take our drink orders first,” and so on. Be sure to name or role-play the behaviors you want to see repeated, such as ordering with a please and thank you, not kicking under the table or banging on the back of the booth, and so on. One great real-world role-play idea is to print out the menu from the restaurant’s website and have your child select which meal he or she will want to eat before you go.

Additionally, we’ve compiled these five tips for dining out that should help your family enjoy a stress-free meal:

1. Choose the restaurant carefully. Ask friends and family with children around the same ages as yours for recommendations of places they like. Check out the menu before you go in, and gauge the reactions of the staff to your children when you walk in. Don’t be afraid to walk back out if you think this isn’t the right place for your family.
2. Bring your own activities, such as crayons and coloring books, if the restaurant won’t have them on hand. Most family-friendly restaurants will be ready with some of their own, though.
3. Go for a walk around the restaurant. Much of the fidgeting at restaurants is because children are curious about what’s around them or are just feeling restless because they are confined to a table. Watch for warning signs of restlessness and use a redirection, such as washing hands in the bathroom, as a reason to move around. Also, a perimeter walk can satisfy their curiosity, give them something to talk about during the meal, and serve as an incentive for good behavior throughout the meal. “If you can follow the rules for good behavior in restaurants, we can walk over again to see the fish tank by the hostess stand on our way out.”
4. Give your child a job to do, such as reading over the menu on her own to choose her meal. This helps to manage problems before they start and also helps children to practice their pleases, thank yous and reading skills.
5. Ask for your children’s food to be brought out first. This cuts down on their filling up on the free bread and then not eating the main course and also reduces their wait time. When the adults are eating their main course, your children can be served desserts.

It’s okay to hire a sitter and go out without your kids.

All of these steps help you establish a “restaurant routine” for your child, and once they’re familiar with it, dining out becomes a more enjoyable experience for everyone. But even if you follow all these tips, some children are just going to experience a meltdown at a restaurant. If that happens to you, follow the same steps we outlined on page 70 in Chapter 3, substituting “restaurant” for “grocery store.” It’s also okay to hire a sitter and go out without your kids, especially if you know you’re going to a place where you’d anticipate a meltdown or problem. Just because we’re parents doesn’t mean we’re obligated to bring our children everywhere.

• • •

Above all, meals should be a pleasant experience, wherever you’re eating. With a few of the suggestions in this chapter you can make your family’s meals both healthy and peaceful and teach your children some of the important manners having to do with eating. All of this will serve them well as they mature and start having opportunities to eat at friends’ houses or go out to eat with other families or groups.