Clean Your Plate

It happened again last night. It happens pretty much every night and every breakfast and lunch too. After ten minutes at the table Sydney will say she's not hungry any more but its clear very little eating has taken place. Often at dinner, especially if she's aware that any kind of desert will be served, she just skip the fake fullness exuse and go strait for the the "can I have desert now" move.

I actually don't have too much of a problem letting Syd off without eating a meal but she nearly always comes back an hour later wanting a special meal. If it weren't for that I'd actually like to instill in her the notion that you stop eating when your full which may mean that you skip a meal now and then.

Unfortuneately that is not the example that we show often enough. I grew up having to clean my plate and vividly remember sitting at our harvest gold dinner table for a couple of hours with four green beans on my plate that I refused to eat. I finally swollowed them cold with my luke warm milk as if they were a pill. So now with Sydney, we often require her to at least eat three bites of her food, or some other arbitrary amount. What makes it crazy is that its often some junk food dinner item like pizza or fast food. You know that something has gone very wrong when you tell your daughter, "Sydney, you can't have your ice cream until you've eaten at least three more bites of your pizza." I'm not sure but I suspect that ice cream may actually be better for you than pizza.