Conquering an Angry Child-Mealtime battles
Last month I was blogging about Encouraging your Reluctant Pre-schooler. This month I will be focusing on how I deal with temper tantrums. [ This post is adapted from my Newsletter short series which ran in 2008]
“I want Cheezels” Ryan keeps on repeating himself like a broken
record, be very persistent in his request.
Does this scenario sound very familiar to you? Getting your child
to eat his dinner can be a daily torture for the parent. It still is for me.
Ryan still takes an extremely long time to finish his food and if you leave it for him to self-feed it can take anywhere between 2-3 hrs.
Roy on the other hand eats faster when we feed him but he can’t sit still and will often give you the run around after 2 to 3 spoonsful of food.
No matter how stressed up and angry you may feel it is very important that
you keep your cool and not to give in to their tantrums.
Shouting and scolding your child will only give adverse results and
make you more desperate as you would not be able to diffuse the
built up tension between your child and you.
It may lead to unwarranted actions like physical punishment, or even threats which you may regret later on as both physical and emotional scars are inflicted on the child.
If you are getting very worked up by your child’s behaviour, step aside and take a breather to refocus yourself before you deal with your child.
Let me share with you how I dealt with his behaviour in this situation.
Understanding that Ryan is an intense and persistent spirited kid, I knew that he was frustrated that he did not get his way.
To diffuse the situation, I took him to the “time out” bench to chill for 5 minutes . With tears rolling down his cheeks and a pout on his lips he still adamantly demanded for Cheezels while plunking himself down
on the seat.
[ Time out wasn’t really working for him and really this detention ran in contradiction to my desired outcome which was to reduce the total time required for the boys to have their meals]
Taking the packet of Cheezels I held it in front of him.
“I know that you want to eat this and are very upset that you are not able to do so ” I said. ” We need to talk about your feelings.”
Ryan told me that he felt mad that he couldn’t get what he want. However he knew that it was dinner time and he needed to finish his meal before he could have the snack. We came to a compromise that evening as he went with the idea that he could take 1 piece of cheezels if he had 2-3 mouthfuls of dinner.
[ I know that it may sound like a bribe. Ryan is very difficult to feed and daily dinners take 1-2hrs. I would try anything to shorten
the time taken for dinner]
That night we finished dinner within 1hr with the table cleared and dishes washed We managed to have some spare time before his bedtime to read through one of his favourite storybooks together before Ryan headed to bed happily.
Now Ryan takes a shorter time to eat and I have changed the reward to having more TV /PC time after dinner.
February 5, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
Great tips Bribery does work!
February 5, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
We too try to avoid turning mealtimes into a struggle. I usually serve the food and let them decide how much to eat, or if to eat at all – but they know that once dinner is over, the next meal will be served the next morning. It seems to work well enough. But from reading your description, it seems my daughters are “easier” then your kids when it comes to food, so maybe I’m just lucky. 🙂
February 6, 2009 @ 11:24 am
act up? like demand for this and that during meal time…. hmmmm… so far, they can understand that during meal time, its the food on the table that matters, nothing else. Any other things come after the meal time is over….
February 6, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
@Angeline,
great that your boys are not so troublesome during mealtimes.