Well, where to start, where to start? I am having a bit of bad day here and need to get this out to see if anyone can help me.


DS is literally a very, very slow eater.. If left to his own devices he would take 3 hours to eat a meal. Not just dinner, but every meal. Evert day is a constant battle of "Are you eating? Come on hurry up!". He is not a fussy eater - he will generally try eveything on his plate so we are lucky there. But he eats super, super slowly. He can be distracted by anything or will get up and start playing. Mealtime with him are very frustrating and it is driving me a little nuts.

He is starting kinder next year and has gotten a place in 3 days a week starting at 8.30am. I shudder to think how we are going to get out of the house. Every night, he has dinner at 5.45pm - he is still sitting there at 7pm.

Sorry if this a bit jumbled but I am trying to think of how to explain myself properly!

We have tried the 'Times up! Get down and get ready for bed" and he goes to bed with no playing with daddy or bedtime story - doesn't bother him in the slightest so to me it seems like he is getting his own way, and DH is also missing out on the only time he gets to spend with DS during the week. We have also tried the 'You have x amount of time to eat" and set a timer but he doesn't really get that, and then he nearly choked to death when the time went off . We don't eat dinner as a family but we do eat lunch and breakfast together. He has tea so early that either DH isn't home for work and we are both not hungry. One of us does sit with him but it gets very, very frustating to sit at the table for a hour and a half. We tried making his dinner time a bit later and eating together but it just didn't work - it was too late for him (6.30pm-ish) and he was past being hungry and too tired to eat.

I guess my questions are

- How long does it take your kids to eat meals?

- What is an acceptable length of time for a meal?

- If we set a amount of time that his meals need to be eaten in - how to we convey that to him? He is learning the time but he got distracted by the clock when we tried to use the "Dinner is over at 6.30pm"

- Am I being too harsh? I don't want to give him a bad relationship with food but I don't know how else to fix this!

(All his meals are currently eaten at a little table in the kitchen. He hates it - but we told him he can't sit at the kitchen table until he starts concentrating at meal times.)

I've just read this back and I sound like a really mean mum!I think I am just at my wits end