I'm a patient person but for whatever reason, my blood absolutely BOILS with this kid at meal times! A little background:
He has poop issues. He's still in diapers, and is terrified of pooping (Mom and Dad said that he's always been like this...he holds it in for days, cries while he's pooping even though it's soft and cries through getting changed...it's weird). In between meal times, he's great! He's a busy 2 1/2 yrs old (3 in Aug), but just needs the normal reminders, nothing extreme..until meal times. When he sits and begins to eat, he's fine. He'll eat a little of what is offered but mostly he just sits there slack jawed and stares at the other kids eating or turns around in his chair to look out the window, plays with his food, causes silly disruptions, etc...I've realized that I'm literally coaxing him to take each and every bite which gets frustrating. I realized this early this week and have stopped, telling myself that if he doesn't eat, to not make any kind of deal about it, if he gets hungry he'll learn faster. Fine, I can totally deal with that. But the freaking annoying part is that about 2 minutes into the meal he starts asking to get down to poo...the first couple times I let him down because he was really fussing but he would just get down and start to go play with something. Nope. Not happening anymore. So, now from about 2 min into the meal and on he whines and squirms and fake cries to get down to poo. This goes on every day, and every meal...its incredibly annoying not only to me but the other children. I tell him that "it's snack time, buddy, when snack time is all done then we can get down". But he is relentless. My rule here is that if you're not going to eat that's fine, but we all sit at the table together until snack time is over (aka last child who is eating is done). It wouldn't be fair to the other children to send him on his way to play after one bite, while the rest are sitting and eating so nicely and I do not want to reward negative behavior. All the rest sit and eat beautifully and clear their plates.

Do you think I'm handling this alright? What would you do/suggest? This can't go on forever, right?? When he eventually realizes that I'm not going to react to his poop control issues and that he can not get down until snack is over?? He's been here for 3 weeks.