In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

My kids sat at the table for dinner from infancy on. Seriously: if
they were awake, we put them in their seats on the table. Once they
were big enough for high chairs, that's where they were during dinner.

It was easier when they were babies. They needed direct supervision
anyhow, so where else could they be? It's that stretch between the
high chair age and the time when they have the patience to sit still for
a few minutes that is the hard part.

With one, we had to make a rule that she had to stay at the dinner table
for a certain number of minutes, because otherwise she'd announce she
was full so she could run back outside to play, and then come in at bed
time starving. We didn't make her eat -- I've never forced my kids to
eat -- but if she stayed at the table she DID eat.

Yeah, one of my older kids was like that for a while, and we said he
had to stay at the table for X minutes, or until he was done with
(some reasonable portion of) his meal. Like your daughter, if he was
stuck at the table anyway, he usually did eat.

By making it more about the family being together than about the food,
it seemed to help.

I guess we're overall not that big into mealtimes being a social time.
We are pretty "down to business" at dinner time. For better or for
worse, we eat more than we talk. We have family "hang out" time at
other times, particularly weekend mornings, where activities, when
present, start much later and give us time to just "be" together, enjoy
one another, and talk.

--Robyn
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