4 yrs old Meal Time Issue

[Lou]

Carla, I'm well aware that children can serve themselves as I've worked many years in formal childcare, however in my small setting I serve it for them. And no, the children do not get "rewarded" for eating their food, dessert is a rare event around here, I just happened to have baked cookies with the kids the day before so it was a nice treat for them. You might want to try responding to posts with a little less attitude and a little more helpful advice, thanks!

I approached lunch a little differently today, since I do not have the time or patience to wait until he finished, I gave them 30 minutes for lunch, gave them a 5 minute warning towards the end and cheerfully said "ok, lunch is over now!". He was trying veggies that he didn't love, but I was very proud of him for trying and let him know that too. I hadmentionedit to his parents the day before, they had a talk with him and his day has all around been so muchbetter today, yay!!!
Thank you all for the great advice/support!

[carla]

Yes the 2 year olds help serve themselves. We use measuring cups and the staff assist in them pouting or placing the food on the plates or placemats. The children under 2 do not self serve. The milk and water is in the smallest container we could find for the kids to pour from the staff do hand over hand to help pour. We had a family on a tour and they were amazed that the toddlers cleaned up
After themselves after lunch. (lol). The toddlers are so great when they put there bibs in the right bucket and scrap the plate after eating.

[playfelt]

I like to do the clean up so most of it gets cleaned up and doesn't land on the floor since I am the cook, server, supervisor, toileting/diapers/naptime tuck in crew as well as the janitor. I prefer to clean from the table not the floor. In home daycare we are a one person operation.

Even with hand washing, young kids will put their hands in their mouths while waiting for food. Self serving is actually one of the ways that unnecessary germs are spread as one child after the other handles the utensils. I see no benefit in the toddlers serving themselves when I still have to serve half the group anyways. As with other areas of development why do we insist on pushing children when they will master the task faster and more efficient even without lots of practice if we wait the extra year or two to introduce a task.

[Crayola kiddies]

It seems as though most of the practices/procedures for center/institution daycare do not really apply to home daycare. Home daycare providers have a max of 5 children at any given time and one set of hands so like another poster said to dirty extra bowls for two or three kids so they can do it them selves is rather counter productive ..... It's easier, faster and cleaner to just serve and probably less wasteful too as kids would often take too much. I like to serve balanced portions so that all is equal. ... But for the original poster I am glad to hear things went better with the new procedure.

[dodge__driver11]

I worked in daycare's before and though self serving drinks is a great idea to learn pouring we had one guy who would dump all the food on his plate EVERY DAY from the serving bowl, therefore we had to revert back to staff serving...so all in all it DOES NOT ALWAYS work, jus' saying

[Pick-a-boo]

I think your rules are very good. Once in a while my son's friends are coming to visit or for sleep over (7yo) and they are pickiest eaters ever. They don't eat veggies, fruits, etc. In our house we have similar rules and it works great. Does not finish his meal - no dessert. Some kids are very stubborn and it takes time and a lot of effort but at the end parents will be happy and the kids will benefit too.

[playfelt]

One of the big things to get around the connection between reward and dessert is to simply say the child ran out of time. That is what happens at my daycare and kids learn to talk less and eat faster too. After a reasonable amount of time and we are talking lunch taking an hour from come sit to wash and go so plenty of time is allowed and as they finish totally they go take off their shoes for nap and are allowed to watch tv - totally works as an incentive to eat faster too. Then I call them one at a time for potty/diaper, tuck in the little ones that go upstairs to playpens and then send the rest to their nap mats - love that the kids shows are often only 15 minutes long so I can wait till the end of the show. It's just what works here and makes for a smooth transition.

[carla]

i am sorry you think i am coming off with attidute but in no way do i mean to be. i am just stating what we do in our daycare. If you work in a daycare in alberta and you are accredited you have standards to keep in order to keep your accreitation. So not only do we have licencing standards we also have accred standards to do. and in the toddler room we have 12 kids and 2 staff so we have just as many kids as a dayhome if you do the ratio. once again i am sorry you think i am coming off with attitude. I did not relize this forum was only for dayhomes as it is daycare bear and sometimes the easiest road is not the best road. we had a very hard time when accred came in and required us to let the children self serve but with months of practise the children can now do it.

[playfelt]

Carla which of those two staff prepare, cook and clean up the kitchen after the meals? Actually a dayhome has 5 daycare children plus the caregivers own children so we are often dealing with 6-10 children on our own and they aren't all the same age so some of those may even be infants that need to be fed by the same caregiver that is cooking, serving, cleaning up, etc.

I haven't read anywhere that the forum is only for dayhomes but it does seem like the majority of people here are and therefore when they ask a question it is based on the realities of home daycare and not a centre.

[Momof4]

My rule is 'I am not a restaurant', haha. I serve one protein, one bread item, and two veggie items at lunch for example. While I agree that children do not have control over much in their lives they must learn what they can decide and what is decided for them. That's called parenting or in our case caregiving.

So I ask them to do their very best and I serve a few teaspoons of each item, then offer seconds and thirds if needed, but I hate throwing food in the garbage. They can decide to eat one of the two veggies and I'm fine with that as long as they 'do their best'.

I do offer fruit after lunch, or a semi-nutritious item like corn nacho chips just as a few examples. I tell the children that they have to eat as much of their main meal as they can if they want their fruit. If they absolutely refuse to finish their lunch then I just save the fruit for afternoon snack. If they eat a couple bites of everything on their plate I'm happy with that and I give them the fruit. In this way I am giving them a choice - choose to eat as much of your main meal as possible or go hungry. A child will learn fast that a hungry tummy doesn't feel very good. And it's only a matter of 3 hours until afternoon snack time.

I don't believe in making children clean their plates and force themselves to eat too much because I think that's setting them up for problems later in life.