Dinner Time Battles - how do you deal with them?

We have this same battle EVERY night at dinner time and i'm pulling my hair out now :wall:
I make DD's dinner around 6pm every night. Sometimes she has the same as us sometimes it's something different depending on what we are eating.
But every night is a battle to get her to eat all her dinner. She screams, she spits it out, she throws it all over the table and i'm COMPLETELY over it!
I've tried making her sit there, i've tried naughty chair, i've tried everything I can think of. I make sure she has her water and paper towel sitting with her.
I don't want to make 50 different meals at night to find something she'll eat and i'm tired of battling with her (i'm wondering if her waking during the night is because she is hungry :think: )but I don't know what to do.

Please help - any suggestions welcome!!!

Ok so this isn' for everyone but this is what we do.

Eat with her.

We eat with Jazz, she eats what we eat. Yep, everything. Tonight was curried sausages. Last week we had Parmigiana. We just give her what we are eating. We sit at the dining table with her high chair pushed up against the dining table (the high chair table stays off, we find it makes her cranky because she feels 'excluded' I guess).

If she chooses not to eat something then thats fine. Look, we've despaired at the fact that some nights she won't eat a thing, while other nights she'll scoff it down! Even if she eats one thing one day, she won't it it the next. It seems so crazy, but its not really. Sometimes we don't feel like certain things, just respect that she doesn't want it.
We don't make her anything else unless she eats absolutely nothing. Then she gets a boring vegemite sandwich.

Oh, and if she's eaten something, then at least its something. I wouldn't push her to eat it ALL. Just trust that she is in tune with her body and has eaten what she wants.

DD is a similar age (she was due a week before your DD was born :D), I just leave her to it, so nights she eats and it is pretty cruisy, other nights food just goes everywhere, I have a large plastic mat (just got some plastic tablecloth material from Spotty's) and have it under her highchair.

We offer her what we are eating, occassionally something different, and then after she's had a good "shot" as it, I offer a desert, so either fruit or yogurt and if she eats she does if she doesn't I don't bother. Some nights we have a tower of food on her head :rofl: she has become quite adept at piling food on her head, behind her back in the highchair or just propelled onto the floor. I swear that I am cleaning up as much as I plated up for her! But as I don't see exactly what she has eaten at Daycare, I can't tell whether she had already had enough for the day so we don't force it.

Last night she was so tired she didn't eat any dinner whatsoever, just wanted milk and was asleep by 6:30pm as she hadn't had a day sleep and just ate grapes all afternoon :o

We have found that if we don't gve her any attention while she eats, not even looking she actually eats more. But if we try to feed her, or make comments or watch her, it just becomes more of a game, she throws more and makes more of a mess. I have made sleeved bibs so it makes the cleanup a little easier :D

If we can we eat the same time, but most of the time she eats a lot earlier than us.

I do find though if I leave her too long she spreads what she doesn't want all over herself, especially pasta, and yogurt :rolleyes: but I look at those moments as photo times for her 21st :rofl:

It is so hard when they just refuse to eat :(

DS1 is a nightmare at times!! Eats much better when spoon fed, some night finger foods are great other nights he chucks all on floor. EG tonight sausages and maccaroni, generally loves sausages tonight ate none so I gave him a tub of pureed fruit which he ate all off. He starts whinging and I offer him off my plate (most nights same as him including currys etc) but no idea why whinging half time as nothing from my plate that I offer is good enough

I cant get him to feed himself with a spoon or fork

We do the same as Leasha...she eats what we eat, I got sick of battling to try and get her to eat all her dinner. Oh and we also don't force the issue of cutlery :redface: if I try to make her eat with it she just flat out refuses to eat anything. I also feed her off my plate during dinner if she gets sick of whats on her plate she will often eat from mine even thought its the same.
Wow ive just realised she doesnt have the best habbits but oh well she eats dinner most nights :lol:

We do the same as Leasha. Although if she doesn't eat anything sometimes I offer her a yoghurt later. If I know she has eaten a lot during the day I might not offer anything later.

We have the same battle here - although with the 3.5 year old. We all eat at the same time, and all eat the same thing. He isn't allowed a drink until half way through his meal. If he doesn't want to use his cutlery, well I just let him use his hands... cause at least it's eating something. I've just figured out that he loves his garlic bread too.... so I bribe... eat "x" amount of vegies, "x" amount of meat and you can have a piece.... then we do it over again... and some nights he eats half, other's he eats it all.

I've also seen dinner time rewards charts done... I don't know if your little one is old enough for that though (sorry didn't see how old they are)... but that could also be another idea!

I'm right there with you. What we are doing atm is giving DS what we are eating- if it something I know he usually likes (and I try to make things I think he will like), and he chooses not to eat it, well, that's tough cookies. We've had nights where he kept asking for food and I kept telling him "your dinner is on the table, kiddo". If its something new and he at least tries a mouthful but won't eat the rest, I will cut him some slack and give him a banana or peanut butter sandwich etc. I also keep a lot of little frozen meals for him that he seems to like- eg- will do up a batch of savoury mince and freeze it in small containers. If I'm cooking something I'm pretty sure he won't like, I will just pull one of the freezer meals out for him. I get him to try what we're eating, but he's pretty shocking with new food. Sigh.

Sounds like we're all doing our best to muddle through one way or another!!

Also same as Leash here! There's only one thing which Oskar seems to consistantly not like and that's quiche or eggs such as scrambled etc. Elijah, he eats pretty much everything. They both eat stuff with curry (mild) and well whatever we're eating they get. We all eat together as a family every night.

DD eats what we eat generally, and we try and eat as a family (not so easy with a BF'ing baby and a hubby who might work late some nights). I also don't force the cutlery - I figure table manners will come eventually! If she starts messing around, eg throwing food or deliberately dropping it on the floor, we take it away, if she asks for it back, we ask her if she will eat nicely, and if she says yes, she gets it back - the first few times we did this, she would still mess about when she got it back, so we would keep taking it away until she got the picture and now we only have to do it the once.

Like Leasha, we have taken the tray off her highchair and pushed it up to the table, and I've bought her a special placemat (just a cheapie from Ikea). When she's had enough, she has to ask to get out of her highchair.

We also don't force an amount she has to eat. Some days, it seems like she might have eaten nothing all day. we generally still give yoghurt even if she only eats a little, but thats because I know that she isn't holding out on eating her food to get youghurt, iykwim. At bedtime, she'll still generally get a biscuit and milk, but this is late enough not for her to associate not eating at tea to get the biscuit.

I also read DD's mood - if she's tired, not her self, etc then I'll give her something I know she'll eat, even if thats baked beans or a peanut butter sandwich.

I think once you get past the idea in your own head that they have to eat X amount per day or else they're not getting all their nutrition needs, it helps you relax and just go with it, so there's no more battles. If you were to see a nutrition about their food intake, they would take a picture over a week or more, not just one day, because it would average out over that period.


Sorry for the essay!

I do the same as everyone else, the kids eat what i eat everynight. unless its something very spicy.
I figure kids will NOT starve themselves and will eat how much they feel like eating some nights it may be the whole plate but other nights it may be only 2 or 3 bites!

Oh yeah, I second what SammyRo said. When you think about 'daily intakes' for toddlers, and very young children, they average it out over a week. So they say over the course of a week, does your child eat so many servings of vegetables, fruit, protein etc. Because somenights they will just not eat, and other nights they'll eat two or three times what their 'daily' intake is KWIM. It takes a nbit of the stress out if you think like that, because there isn't that thought that you have to make them eat a certain amount each and every night.