Children don't hear the word 'no' often enough

Thank you radicalnan I enjoyed reading your post and think you made some very good points.

gillybob. There was a play about a girl who didn't want her breakfast (I think it was kippers) and her father insisted on putting it on the table every morning. I saw it when I was a teenager and now you've got me trying to remember it's name. It was quite famous at the time. Kitchen sink era.

I wonder if, in famine regions the kids are so picky, and whether or not their taste buds develop at 18 months?

First world problems. We have too much choice and certainty about the next meal, or better still treat coming along, to take the edge off our 'hunger'.

Food is just one area where children are allowed to exercise their choices in ways that were not encouraged before all the psycho babble nonsense became generally accepted.....clothes, passtimes, even schools are becoming things that kids can choose for themselves now and even gender is on the horizon as an opt in at will.

I don't know where this child centred approach came from, whether it is advertising, prosperity or just idiocy, we seem to pander to them far too much and they are not that much happier for it.

I too was made to sit and eat what was on my plate, and once as a teenager had my face hed down into my dinner, which was mashed potatoes and tinned tomatoes, can't bear the smell of either of those now 50 years on!!!!

As a herd / tribe however it is important for survival that children be taught what 'no' means and encouraged to eat everything because who knows when those chicken nuggets might just disappear.

I went through it with my two youngest children, where with my two older ones (by 15 years) there was not as much choice or support for choices. We were poorer then and adults expected kids to 'eat it all up'. I never made mine sit for hours with uneaten food, that felt cruel but in a way, I wish I had been sterner.

Life could be about to take an almighty down turn for a lot of us, and what survival skills do these kids have when they only feel secure with their own wisdom on choices?

Some of the war time ration recipes were bizarre but hungry people ate them. I don't suppose Ann Frank sat behind the hidden door dictating what she felt she fancied to eat or making as much noise as she liked.

Everything is a social construct, we make it all up as we go along. Like the 10 second rule, some people will eat food that has been on the floor and others won't, masses of food is wasted because people religiously subscribe to use by dates and others eat stuff from the supermarket skips........

Affluence brings choice, nothing else, the poor cannot afford to be demanding about anything.

I don't think there's anything at all my three DGC won't eat. They love their meals (always starving) and almost always clear their plates. They love all vegetables and will give anything a try. Mind you they are extremely fit (always playing sport of some kind) so probably need the fuel.

Just reading about Baggs DD, Minibaggs . My sister lived on an extremely limited diet until she was well into her teens (probably about 16) when she started to try more foods. She lived on bread (my grandmas homemade preferably but any white bread) this could be toasted or not, potatoes (chips, mash,boiled) thinly cut ham (but not bacon) and ready Brek (made extra runny), Yorkshire puddings and gravy and basically that was it.

She was stick thin and my mum was never away from the doctors with her. These days she eats everything and anything.

100% agree with rules and boundaries, having worked in a school and seen the teenagers we are now breeding ! I know 3 separate examples of affluent families who have over-indulged their kids and now as adults, are paying a high price. The various kids don't know how to budget, pay bills etc They have wasted money on alcohol, drugs and gambling, so have enormous debts too. It's as if they can't get joy from little things in life, as they have had everything handed on a plate so easily. They just expect all their life's will be like that .... So when life doesn't go their way, they have no coping mechanism and go off the rails.

My GC are often asked what they want for dinner. One of them actually said 'you never asked me if I wanted pizza'. I pointed out to her that her daddy had never been asked what he wanted and always had to eat what was on his plate. For once, she was speechless.

I was forced at junior school to eat the two foods that I loathed and detested and still do to this day: potatoes and cheese. I even vomited everything back up a couple of times, but still they persisted. I have never, ever, forced my own children to eat anything they didn't like, and both seem to enjoy almost everything now they are adults.

Yes! Parents must stop parenting by social media standards and start parenting by what is fit for each child.

It's OK to teach them about "NO" and "you can wait a bit" and "consequences for your actions" because these things too provide a good sense of balance when tied with all the positives regarding parenting.

A child who is being parented by social media standards will never truly know what "being let down" "not getting the job" "Sorry but you weren't accepted" will feel like and they won't know how to deal with it. Most will suffer from depression because they haven't felt those "negative" emotions.

Balance! All about balance!

I was forced to sit and eat everything off my plate, my Mother would sit there with me, sometimes I'd be there until 11pm at night, I felt so frightened of my Mother, and to this day, have a bad relationship with her. Very domineering. My SIL's GD, 5, is a spoilt little madam, and will carefully arrange herself on the hearth rug, lay down and scream at the top of her voice if she does not get what she wants to eat, SIL's daughter can't do a thing with her, whilst baby-sitting this child one day, she wanted me to go to the shops for a packet of Pink Wafers, I told her no, she went through the whole gamut of tantrums, throwing herself on the floor, screaming, beating her head on a cushion, I ignored her till she'd wore herself out, she then came to me, and asked me for her dinner, after that, she was very well behaved and went to bed, without any further protest!

We don't expect clean plates at our house and if a child has a real dislike of a particular food we take note of that just as we would for any guest.

But if they don't eat a dinner of food they like then there's only fruit available until the next meal.

We noticed on holiday how often the older 2 couldn't eat dinner but could eat continuously between meals .

We do use the word no and when we use it we mean it and the grandkids all know that. They do things with their parents they wouldn't even try with us. They're not daft :-)

I'm not sure if just going to a Montessori nursery 25 years ago would have that much effect - it must be the home life too. Perhaps the parents have not heard of the word 'no'.

my friends beautiful daughter also went to montessori and she's a wonderful young woman kind hearted ,well mannered adn all you'd want in a daughter..maybe it was their home life that made your friends children how they are ,Montessori gets a brilliant reputation in education for under 5's

Minibags ate everything she was offered until she was two and a half. Since then there have been and are a lot of foods she will not try though she is now beginning to try things she wouldn't try before and will eat some of the old favourites like Toad-in-the-hole, corned beef hash, macaroni cheese. It isn't just, if at all, about taste in her case, but an actual fear of food syndrome (not an official name, just what I call it). There's bugger all anyone can do about it.

Fortunately, she always liked the bread I made (into which I put extra, nutritious ingredients like ground linseed) and has remained healthy on a very narrow diet by most people's standards. It does make me wonder if we really need masses of variety so long as our diets include the essential range of nutrients.

Serving up the same food until it is eaten would have no effect on my ASD grandson. His diet is very limited and he has no real interest in food so he would sit and look at it for days without eating it. His brother eats anything that's offered!

At the moment GS3's favourite word is NO. He uses it whether he actually means no or yes. Hopefully it's a phase.

Boundaries are essential for children, we need to give them a realistic idea of life. No should mean no and not change for crying or tantrums.
Respect for others is another essential parenting lesson.

That explains a lot, midgey.

SIL sent her children to a Montessori nursery about 25 years ago, the word No was not allowed, i don't think many boundaries were set at all, they both turned out to be awful children and are now very rude adults!

It's not parenting either - siblings can have quite different likes and dislikes as far as food is concerned yet have had the same meals offered to them.

I use the word NO in all sorts of other ways but NOT where food is concerned,No if they want to do something I think is dangerous or too messy ...like foot painting when I'd just cleaned the kitchen floor..lol or want to watch things I think aren't suitable.More often though I'll say let me think about it and by the time I have they've changed their minds

Taste apparently comes into play sometime after 18 months, so the baby who ate everything becomes the toddler who is fussy.

That's awful gillybob and reminds me of a film I watched years ago when the daughter of the house was supposed to eat some fish and couldn't; her father (James Mason) put it in front of her meal after meal (turned out she was pregnant).

I was encouraged to try things I thought I may not like and did the same with my own DC (sprouts for instance) and we all like them now.

However, I will say that some parents do use the word 'no' sometimes if needed and do have boundaries as well as encouraging - and their children seem to be the ones who are a pleasure to be with.

DGS refuses all green vegetables because his idiot father tells him that green means poison! Hard to persuade him to try anything as dad feeds a very limited diet when kids visit him.
All this from a man who lives on stodge, fat and sugar.

I'm with you Gillybob, I'm really against forcing children to eat anything they would find unpalatable, not being flippant but it seems an abuse of their human rights. I was forced to eat rice pudding at school, lumps the size of planets till I was sick, I vowed I would never inflict the same treatment on a child of mine. I did end up with one of my kids being a faddy eater, wouldn't touch broccoli for example for some reason or other called it "seaweed". He eats pretty much everything now, although he still won't touch the odious, in his eyes, green veg. My grandchildren can be picky over certain things but conversely like broccoli over anything else , so if that's their preferred choice in a vegetable I think it's a good one. I wouldn't force them to eat anything, maybe cajole a bit, but if they flatly refuse, which isn't often, I go along with that.

As a child I hated my mother's meat and potato pie. She used to make the crust thick and doughy because that was the way my father liked it p, and the filling was bland. I was made to sit in misery until I ate it, which I eventually did, often with tears running down my face. I always said that I would not do he same to my children and I didn't, although if they refused to eat a meal they didn't get anything else. (There often wasn't anything else!). DD said when GS was small that she wouldn't be a slave to his likes and dislikes. Well, they say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions! He would eat just about anything you put in front of him - animal or vegetable - until he was about nineteen months old then, inexplicably, the shutters came down with a bang and he suddenly stopped eating all sorts of things, potatoes, butter on bread and anything with tomatoes or a sauce on being particular no-no's. She never made him eat things he didn't like, and stopped beating her brains out trying to find things he did like. He seemed to live on plain pasta and vegetables for ages, but it did him no harm and his palate has broadened over the last few years so that now, at ten, he is quite adventurous. And now, after many years, I like meat and potato pie!