mealtime- 2yr old

Oh, mealtime dramas. -
My almost 2 year old, is occasionally a fussy eater, once he gets that first mouth full of food in , he is ok. But this is always our meal dramas for tea

We have tea at about 6ish, have it early for we can all eat together.. we dish up all our meals and sit at the table.. we eat ours whilst DS just plays etc. we think he isn?t hungry. so we say, "that we are going to give your food to the dog etc" then its like no no no no ? doesn?t want us to do it

So we clean up etc, and DS will then tell me to sit with him at his little table and chairs,and what does he do. he wants to eat the whole bowl of food, exactly what we had.. hmm doesn?t make sense.. but the annoying this is, I have to feed him, where as he can do it by himself.. he always feeds himself with a spoon.

I have seen him at childcare thru the window & he will sit at the table with all the other kids, and feed himself all together.. at home different story.

it would be so much easier if he ate with us.. I don?t understand why he wants to eat after we have our meal, we do have to threaten that the dog will get the meal etc

I have been putting up with it, only cos I want him to eat his veggies etc, otherwise if I don?t give it to him, feed him , he will then want a biscuit 10mins later..

I hope soon he will go back to feeding himself when we have our meal, all together

Does anyone elses Toddler do this? any suggestions,, our mealtimes are lasting about an hr in total by the time we all eat.

The only thing I can suggest is sitting him at a child size table? If he is eating ok at Child Care, that might be the key for the interim. Perhaps one meal a day with you at the big table and build up to it... we had to do this with DD at one point as she would only eat at her little table. Now she happily toddles to the main table when we say it is meal time...

My 3yo loves to "copy" everything he does at day care at home. We play show and tell, and meal times all the time. But real mealtimes are eaten at the table. I think the eating thing is very much about asserting power. Kids know that parents get upset when they don't eat and they use it to get attention. We have had similar problems with DS1 - he still, at 3 1/2 sometimes wants us to feed him. But we don't. After reading the brilliant book "Toddler Tactics" by Pinky McKay, we now follow her advice. When he mucks around we set the timer and tell him dinner is over when it goes off. Then we ignore him - no cajoling, nagging, helping etc, just going about the normal business of having dinner. Then when the timer goes off, his plate is taken away, no matter how much fuss he makes we stay calm and say, "sorry, dinner is over". Now we rarely need to set the timer. He knows he has to eat by himself or he goes hungry. Most nights he eats at least most of his dinner without any fuss.

You may find that he want you to feed him because it is time he gets to spend with you on your own, my ds1(hes nearly 4) will somtimes do this because he sees me feeding his little brother and he wants that attention.