Muddling Through Motherhood

And if not, why not? Do they eat the same thing as you? Have they always?

Rowan is a toddler that doesn’t want to sit down. As I understand it this is pretty common for toddlers and nothing to panic about. We’ve decided not to try to make him (unless we’re in a restaurant or somewhere and then only until we’ve finished eating). The one thing we do insist on is that we all (wherever humanly possible) sit down together at dinnertime. He doesn’t always stay sitting up (if he’s not slept properly during the day and is too tired this can happen) but David and I sit and eat our meals (sometimes he sits on our lap to eat, but that’s fine) before we do anything different.

We’ve always done this with him, even when we had to eat at 5pm! He’s always had the same dinner as us – we have adapted our dinners to suit his nutritional requirements (no salt) or motor skills (in chip shapes when he was younger) but we pretty much always eat the same thing.

I couldn’t stand the hassle of doing things separately – the cost and the effort, and I think its really important that a family sits down together at least once a day, preferably eating the same things! I strongly believe that children learn through observation much more easily than through being taught, and they love to copy us so much that really, eating has never been a problem for us with Rowan. Sometimes he doesn’t eat what we have and ends up with a piece of toast for dinner, but that’s fine because most of the time he does – from curry to stir fry.

I’m just genuinely baffled as to why people don’t arrange their days so they can all eat together (or at least as much of the family as possible). We’re constantly re-evaluating our arrangements to make sure everyone gets what they need (Rowan gets hungry at around 4.30 and if he’s hungry I feed him – normally something like a cracker and some raisins. This was making him not want his dinner so we moved it back to 6.30 and heh presto, those all important veggies get eaten again!)

I suspect some people will think I am smug because we haven’t yet hit one of those magic times where the older toddler suddenly starts refusing everything they ate before, but we have been through plenty of food phases with Rowan and I hope I can cook inventively enough to counter the worst of it, even if we change our menu somewhat to suit him. For example, Rowan has only recently gone back to eating meat in chunks, and oily fish – he ate them for about 6 months when first weaning then started to reject them. Brocolli used to be the infallible food and is now just averagely popular. He still won’t eat anything potato based that’s not a chip, and has to have his pasta cut up and mixed into his sauce. I know it will get worse at some point, but I think if we stay relaxed we’ll cope. If not, feel free to call me a smug cow

Of course I’m sure some people have some excellent reasons for doing so, but I bet quite a few could rearrange their timings so they all ate together, or at least cooked one thing for all the family then reheated it for the adults later! However, if you wish you could all eat together, I bet with a bit of inventiveness and flexibility, you could!