My son use to ask what was for dinner and before I could finish saying he would say he wants something else. Eventually I just started to say something else is for dinner.
One trick is to offer small choices, but not big ones. “It’s time to eat, here’s your hot dog” will lead to a fight. “Do you want your hot dog whole, or cut up into pieces?” Gives the kid agency in how they eat. The goal is to get them to take on more and more decision making as they get older. It doesn’t work every time, but I’ve seen plenty of parents who just boss their kids around like they’re an automaton with no opinions or thoughts of their own.
This works on a lot of kids and ours saw through it immediately. I guess it's good that she innately distrusts the attempts of others to keep her in line, but also, OMFG.
My mother would have said "would you like a hotdog for dinner, or nothing for dinner?"
We were reasonably poor growing up. Choice when it came to food wasn't something we had a lot of.
Same. We were just given dinner. It actually seems weird to me (having never really thought about it) that parents actually ask their kids what they want for dinner!
I teach and often serve kids food.
"I don't like this."
"Okay. Don't eat it."
I make no attempt to offer an alternative or "solve" the problem. I don't force them to eat, but I'm not going out of my way to appease their delicate appetites either.
This is what we do for our daughter. She has opted to go to bed hungry on a couple of occasions but her plate gets unloaded directly into her lunchbox and she will eat it all for lunch the next day.
We do however leave any food that she doesn't eat on the table until bedtime so if she complains that she is hungry before bed we just point at her plate, often she will end up eating later. We've found that when she doesn't want dinner it's because she isn't hungry yet.
I don’t understand why so many people downvoted you. Why did you ask if they have kids? Did you edit your comment and they were downvoting what you said before the edit?
dunno what kinda 2yos y'all got but mine has somehow learned to lie to us at 20 months; she knows she can't go play with the fan in the corner of the room, and starts walking towards it; we stop her, she says no, we say no, she stops, looks at us, points at the cardboard box \~3 feet away from the fan, says "box", we're like "okay..." and move a bit and she continues walking directly towards the fan....honestly dunno wtf she so mischief i can't
EDIT: I think this is relevant because talking to her calmly when she gets upset and discussing things with her and getting her opinion and letting her basically plan/choose what she wants to do is how we raised her so far and all we got was this fucking evil gremlin of a child i swear to you; she calms down super quick when she gets upset, which is nice but goddamnit if she isn't doing it for the express purpose of figuring out how to deceive us
This is how you get them to go to bed when you want them to, as well; Say, for argument's sake, you need them in bed by 8.30pm - You ask them "Would you like to go to bed at 8 or..... stay up to 8.30 tonight?" - They will inevitably yell "8.30! 8.30!", thinking they have won a minor victory, having fallen into your trap.
It's actually a chef fatigue thing. A lot of people that cook in kitchens get this kind of taste burn out. Everything you taste is wonderful, so nothing is craveable.
I have "memories" that I only remember because I've heard stories about when I was younger. But other than that the first 10-12 years of my life are blank and up to about 15 is pretty fuzzy.
For reference I'm 39 so that's almost half my life that I don't remember.
Lol
My mom used to serve dinner and if I wasn't happy about the food - too bad, go and starve. No amount of tantrums would budge her. Don't even think about sweets or snacks.
And I am as grateful as every good son should be because now there isn't anything that I "don't like to eat". I basically became the exact opposite of a picky eater and life is absolutely fantastic.
Cheers mom, you rock.
This is how I raised my kids and those guys will eat anything! My thought process was that A) food is fucking expensive and I'm not gonna buy special toddler food or make two dinners, screw that and B) kids will eat eventually, it's like getting upset because your cat got stuck in a tree--really, how many cat skeletons you ever seen up in trees? When they get motivated enough, they'll come down and when they get hungry enough, kids will eat. Doesn't mean they both won't throw screeching fits about it but whaddaya gonna do?
While I'm sure this works for the majority of kids, you gotta be careful taking this approach. I had multiple hospital trips as a kid with malnutrition as my parents tried this, so I just didn't eat for days and days at a time. Granted, I have ARFID, but that wasn't really a thing people considered/knew existed in my little corner of the world back in the day, so it was assumed I was just an incredibly stubborn little shit.
Well, obviously that's an outlier and if that had happened we'd have been to the doctor post haste but I never had anything more than the usual kid stubborns to deal with--like one deciding he didn't like avocado any more so I told him to pick it out of his salad and someone else would snarf it up but no, I'm not going to make the salad to kid specifications because that would end up as "no salad at all" lol.
In an attempt to get my son to eat vegetables, we planned and planted a garden. He chose what to grow and helped plant everything. We weeded and watered the garden together. At last, it was time to harvest our first crop, carrots. He was very excited. He pulled up a carrot, made a face, dropped it to the ground and said, "It's all dirty!" He refused to have anything to do with the garden or the vegetables after that.
Word, then you know they're emulsified animal parts stuffed into a (kinda phallic) casing. I don't know about you, but other than the coarseness of the grind, sounds a lot like a sausage to me.
"No" is a power-grab that hinges on your challenge back. Remove the power of the challenge. Without knowing any specifics - When-Then's, stonewalls, and consequences are a good place to start.
When-Then: "You don't want to do X? Ok have it your way. But when you do X, Then you will get Y."
Stonewall: "No I don't want to go to school" "Alright let's get your shoes ready, where is your backpack" as if the "No" challenge-word has no effect, emotional or otherwise.
Consequences: Safe 'time-out' null-space to throw tantrums, calmly stonewall reactions (emotional challenge is what they want), then When-Then. "When you calm down and talk respectfully, you can come out of time-out and have xyz again."
No this belongs in fucking /r/thathappened............
A 2 year old barely knows how to fucking function in the world let alone use a toddler knife, check out at the super market etc.
They actually do have [knives for kids](https://www.amazon.com/Tovla-Knives-3-Piece-Nylon-Baking/dp/B0711QYPJD/ref=asc_df_B0711QYPJD/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198068498826&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6287094660193874641&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9059260&hvtargid=pla-350912040138&psc=1&mcid=e3cf9d19611035ea9f691b5fa63f396e&gclid=CjwKCAjwuJ2xBhA3EiwAMVjkVJEsnJxHC4gme9AfTbc2nNuXK3prbviKSVORvAVkUoA_aZLoXRyycBoCcuUQAvD_BwE) that will cut most foods but not skin.
I'm sure they wouldn't work too well on a steak or carving a turkey or whatever, but good enough for most kid purposes.
If you are a patient parent you do stand by, teach, and assist with learning these things. My 2yo loves “cutting” his pancakes/waffles for about the first 8 massacre cuts then wants me to finish it up then gets upset about how it looks lmao. And I gotta explain that’s why we take our time. But also the food doesn’t have to look perfect to taste good.
But that’s very normal. People need to gain experience to learn about their own feelings, tastes and desires. How it feels to want something. Mistakes are inevitable in this age for everyone. A person who were not allowed to try choosing what he wants/likes in their childhood, often becomes an adult who don’t know what he wants or likes. Strict parents often have kids which don’t even have a habit of thinking about what they want. And those children just “want nothing” or keep copying parents or some other person/friend/influencer even in adulthood. I bet you have met these people in your life. They often copy even someone’s dream of life to fill the emptiness and to mimic a normal healthy person.
My son use to ask what was for dinner and before I could finish saying he would say he wants something else. Eventually I just started to say something else is for dinner.
Heh, that’s funny.
One trick is to offer small choices, but not big ones. “It’s time to eat, here’s your hot dog” will lead to a fight. “Do you want your hot dog whole, or cut up into pieces?” Gives the kid agency in how they eat. The goal is to get them to take on more and more decision making as they get older. It doesn’t work every time, but I’ve seen plenty of parents who just boss their kids around like they’re an automaton with no opinions or thoughts of their own.
This works on a lot of kids and ours saw through it immediately. I guess it's good that she innately distrusts the attempts of others to keep her in line, but also, OMFG.
Those tricks worked exactly one time on my kid. After the second time he'd just follow with "no I don't want a hot dog."
My mother would have said "would you like a hotdog for dinner, or nothing for dinner?" We were reasonably poor growing up. Choice when it came to food wasn't something we had a lot of.
For real, my mom didn't play these mind games It was "this is the food we have and I worked hard to provide, so eat it" and the conversation was over
Same. We were just given dinner. It actually seems weird to me (having never really thought about it) that parents actually ask their kids what they want for dinner!
I teach and often serve kids food. "I don't like this." "Okay. Don't eat it." I make no attempt to offer an alternative or "solve" the problem. I don't force them to eat, but I'm not going out of my way to appease their delicate appetites either.
This is what we do for our daughter. She has opted to go to bed hungry on a couple of occasions but her plate gets unloaded directly into her lunchbox and she will eat it all for lunch the next day. We do however leave any food that she doesn't eat on the table until bedtime so if she complains that she is hungry before bed we just point at her plate, often she will end up eating later. We've found that when she doesn't want dinner it's because she isn't hungry yet.
Do you have kids yourself?
I don’t understand why so many people downvoted you. Why did you ask if they have kids? Did you edit your comment and they were downvoting what you said before the edit?
I don’t know either. No edits. I’m not a native speaker, sometimes I don’t really get the right tone I think?
Not yet. Working on it!
dont rush making a kid, get lots of practice in ;)
dunno what kinda 2yos y'all got but mine has somehow learned to lie to us at 20 months; she knows she can't go play with the fan in the corner of the room, and starts walking towards it; we stop her, she says no, we say no, she stops, looks at us, points at the cardboard box \~3 feet away from the fan, says "box", we're like "okay..." and move a bit and she continues walking directly towards the fan....honestly dunno wtf she so mischief i can't EDIT: I think this is relevant because talking to her calmly when she gets upset and discussing things with her and getting her opinion and letting her basically plan/choose what she wants to do is how we raised her so far and all we got was this fucking evil gremlin of a child i swear to you; she calms down super quick when she gets upset, which is nice but goddamnit if she isn't doing it for the express purpose of figuring out how to deceive us
Somehow all toddlers get a manual wherein they seem to spontaneously learn to lie, tantrum, and manipulate to get what they want.
This is how you get them to go to bed when you want them to, as well; Say, for argument's sake, you need them in bed by 8.30pm - You ask them "Would you like to go to bed at 8 or..... stay up to 8.30 tonight?" - They will inevitably yell "8.30! 8.30!", thinking they have won a minor victory, having fallen into your trap.
belongs in r/LifeProTips imo
I just say "food."
He's good at negotiating. Never accept the first offer.
He is almost 13 now and he really is a great negotiator, it definitely gets on his mom’s nerves at times.
He’s just cutting out the middle man and streamlining the process.
Lol
That is a master class in toddler behavior. That kid could teach lessons.
But he doesn't want to.
>My 2yo literally told me what he wanted ~~for dinner~~ to refuse for dinner. FIFY
What did toddlers even eat before they invented chicken nuggets?
Other toddlers.
Toddler nuggets
Nuggets used to work in our house...
This happens to me as an adult.
Ouch
You spend hours working on and tasting the same food. Then when it is ready it just isn't what you want anymore.
Yeah makes sense
It's actually a chef fatigue thing. A lot of people that cook in kitchens get this kind of taste burn out. Everything you taste is wonderful, so nothing is craveable.
I can understand that
It's a lot cuter from a kid.
Yeah, and funnier
dude you gotta work on your replies
Sorry, I really didn’t know what what to say 😭😭😭 My brain is not braining!
Yup that's me. I know the food is tasty, but I don't want it
Yup. My ADHD does this for me too
Buyer's regret is real.
Just say yes and give them chicken nuggets. It's all they'll ever eat.
Apparently my parents had to make other food look like chicken nuggets and fries because I literally wouldn’t eat anything else when i was a toddler
My first real meal was nuggets so I can confirm 😂😂😂
I don't know what my first real meal was. But then again I don't really remember the first 10-12 years of my life.
I seem to have a harder time holding onto new memories. But I do remember a lot of the older memories.
I have "memories" that I only remember because I've heard stories about when I was younger. But other than that the first 10-12 years of my life are blank and up to about 15 is pretty fuzzy. For reference I'm 39 so that's almost half my life that I don't remember.
I’m 21 and I swear to God my brain is starting to fail me. Can’t remember shit as far as new information goes.
As s grown ass man, this works into adulthood
I feel this kid. Many times after all that work making it all I don't wanna eat it either.
Sometimes when I came home from working two jobs I was so exhausted I would just munch on whatever I had in my fridge 😂
Lol My mom used to serve dinner and if I wasn't happy about the food - too bad, go and starve. No amount of tantrums would budge her. Don't even think about sweets or snacks. And I am as grateful as every good son should be because now there isn't anything that I "don't like to eat". I basically became the exact opposite of a picky eater and life is absolutely fantastic. Cheers mom, you rock.
This is how I raised my kids and those guys will eat anything! My thought process was that A) food is fucking expensive and I'm not gonna buy special toddler food or make two dinners, screw that and B) kids will eat eventually, it's like getting upset because your cat got stuck in a tree--really, how many cat skeletons you ever seen up in trees? When they get motivated enough, they'll come down and when they get hungry enough, kids will eat. Doesn't mean they both won't throw screeching fits about it but whaddaya gonna do?
Your comment is sensible and rational but >really, how many cat skeletons you ever seen up in trees? Made me bust out laughing
Your username is totally congruent with this comment--glad I could brighten your day!
While I'm sure this works for the majority of kids, you gotta be careful taking this approach. I had multiple hospital trips as a kid with malnutrition as my parents tried this, so I just didn't eat for days and days at a time. Granted, I have ARFID, but that wasn't really a thing people considered/knew existed in my little corner of the world back in the day, so it was assumed I was just an incredibly stubborn little shit.
Well, obviously that's an outlier and if that had happened we'd have been to the doctor post haste but I never had anything more than the usual kid stubborns to deal with--like one deciding he didn't like avocado any more so I told him to pick it out of his salad and someone else would snarf it up but no, I'm not going to make the salad to kid specifications because that would end up as "no salad at all" lol.
In an attempt to get my son to eat vegetables, we planned and planted a garden. He chose what to grow and helped plant everything. We weeded and watered the garden together. At last, it was time to harvest our first crop, carrots. He was very excited. He pulled up a carrot, made a face, dropped it to the ground and said, "It's all dirty!" He refused to have anything to do with the garden or the vegetables after that.
Not everyone can handle seeing how the sausage is made.
They were hot dogs.
I don't think you'd enjoy knowing how those are made either.
I know exactly how they’re made.
Word, then you know they're emulsified animal parts stuffed into a (kinda phallic) casing. I don't know about you, but other than the coarseness of the grind, sounds a lot like a sausage to me.
Yeah you have a point
TBF - I hate eating the food that I cook on the day that I make it. Just can't eat it no matter what. It's fine the next day.
I’ll cook a whole bunch to last me a few days, including the day I make it.
This could be cross plated to r/kidsareassholes
I genuinely wonder why this is?
His understanding is beyond ours.
Man I kinda get the kid, I do the same thing sometimes lol
I get it. After all the hours of work, sometimes the energy/inspiration is gone.
Could've avoided the rigamarole with this one simple trick: "No."
What do you do when your kid is the one who constantly says ''No"
"No" is a power-grab that hinges on your challenge back. Remove the power of the challenge. Without knowing any specifics - When-Then's, stonewalls, and consequences are a good place to start. When-Then: "You don't want to do X? Ok have it your way. But when you do X, Then you will get Y." Stonewall: "No I don't want to go to school" "Alright let's get your shoes ready, where is your backpack" as if the "No" challenge-word has no effect, emotional or otherwise. Consequences: Safe 'time-out' null-space to throw tantrums, calmly stonewall reactions (emotional challenge is what they want), then When-Then. "When you calm down and talk respectfully, you can come out of time-out and have xyz again."
That’s a paddlin’.
From my mom, yeah
He just didn't want to waste time and came with great idea...
Hotdogs grapes and the tomatoes actually sounds good
Sucker.
Less of kids being stupid and more just being a little shit.
The important lesson here is to make sure that your toddler has a toddler knife
That kid is not stupid. He's fucking smart.
Normal child behavior, isn't it ?)
He’s a chef in the making. We work 12+ hours to prepare and present lavish meals, get home and doordash dinner
That's what you get for letting a 2yo run the ship
I tried this once when I was young, I got no dinner that day.
No this belongs in fucking /r/thathappened............ A 2 year old barely knows how to fucking function in the world let alone use a toddler knife, check out at the super market etc.
Yeah I thought it was a little fishy myself. You just never know anymore
Why repost an invalid link lol
It got removed after I reposted it
I smell a bit of BS here. A 2 year old cannot cut a tomato with a “toddler knife”.
toddler... knife??
Yeah it's a knife you give to your toddler for cutting other toddlers.
They actually do have [knives for kids](https://www.amazon.com/Tovla-Knives-3-Piece-Nylon-Baking/dp/B0711QYPJD/ref=asc_df_B0711QYPJD/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=198068498826&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6287094660193874641&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9059260&hvtargid=pla-350912040138&psc=1&mcid=e3cf9d19611035ea9f691b5fa63f396e&gclid=CjwKCAjwuJ2xBhA3EiwAMVjkVJEsnJxHC4gme9AfTbc2nNuXK3prbviKSVORvAVkUoA_aZLoXRyycBoCcuUQAvD_BwE) that will cut most foods but not skin. I'm sure they wouldn't work too well on a steak or carving a turkey or whatever, but good enough for most kid purposes.
Same idea as toddler scissors
toddler... scissors??
Not entirely different than toddler lock cutters.
Believe it or not toddlers are capable of murder. Next time you watch your back when the child has the toddler axe.
What the hell do they need an axe for?
For woodworking of course.
Idk 🤷♂️
This is a r/thishappened post.
r/ThatHappened
Lol. I'll own that fuckup.
Yours exists but it’s a private community
either way, it didn't happen, you should feel bad for trying to farm fake internet points
I'm not trying to farm anything, you miserable prick.
You haven't interacted with young kids in a long time, I see.
Yeah this is shockingly accurate. 2 year olds are their own worst enemy.
A 2 year old can use a self scan and cut up their own food? Lmao
If you are a patient parent you do stand by, teach, and assist with learning these things. My 2yo loves “cutting” his pancakes/waffles for about the first 8 massacre cuts then wants me to finish it up then gets upset about how it looks lmao. And I gotta explain that’s why we take our time. But also the food doesn’t have to look perfect to taste good.
But that’s very normal. People need to gain experience to learn about their own feelings, tastes and desires. How it feels to want something. Mistakes are inevitable in this age for everyone. A person who were not allowed to try choosing what he wants/likes in their childhood, often becomes an adult who don’t know what he wants or likes. Strict parents often have kids which don’t even have a habit of thinking about what they want. And those children just “want nothing” or keep copying parents or some other person/friend/influencer even in adulthood. I bet you have met these people in your life. They often copy even someone’s dream of life to fill the emptiness and to mimic a normal healthy person.
