If Getting Your Child to Eat their Meals is Stressing You Out, This Post is For You

There seems to be a lot of pressure surrounding mealtimes as soon as kids are involved.

As a kid, our family rule was to try a little bit of everything and to clear our plates. Most of the time this was not a particularly negative rule, aside from the mealtimes I can remember sitting, sometimes for hours after the rest of my family had left the table, trying to eat something I really hated.

Usually, this was something to do with mushrooms.

I still hate mushrooms to this day.

I knew pretty quickly the pressure and stress I felt about getting Jerome to eat when he was younger were not a healthy way to treat mealtimes in our home, so we developed a pretty simple system I wanted to share with you.

This is my second post in the No More Parenting Stress series, check out the first one, If Teaching Your Kids to Share is Stressing You Out, This Post is For You.


1. We do not enforce cleaning the plate

In general, our rule is that we trust our children to know when they have eaten enough. 

If they did eat what they needed, or really are not hungry, we do not make a big deal about food left on their plates. In fact, I know for myself that I sometimes just don't need my last few bites of food.

I respect my own limits and want to extend the same courtesy to my children.

This rule does have two exceptions. First, if a child did not eat because they did not like the meal, we will offer this plate to them again if they ask for a snack before the next meal.

The second exception is shared in my fourth step.


2. We do not cook child-friendly meals (specifically)

Our family eats a lot of stir-fry, salads for supper, fajitas with onions and peppers, fish tacos with coleslaw, vermicelli bowls which consist of a lot of fresh vegetables. When I start listing off what we actually eat, it's pretty obvious these are not items you would see on a kids menu.

But our kids are open to all kinds of food options, and are receptive to trying new and different things. I attribute this to the fact that we have always offered them a wide variety of real, healthy foods.

There have absolutely been times when the children have refused to eat something we offered or struggled with preferences. In these instances, we try to be respectful, not loading up Benedict's plate with coleslaw when we know he doesn't like it, and giving Jerome a portion with less red peppers.

But we have found as we continue to offer foods with a no-pressure attitude, the children's tastes develop, and there are many things they eat happily now which they were not fond of even a few months ago.


3. If a child leaves the table or is not acting with proper mealtime etiquette they are showing us they are done

This is actually one we struggled with for such a long time, and it has such a simple answer. You can thank Janet Lansbury for this one.

Our rule is, if a child is leaving the table, we remind them that this shows us they are done and their food will be put away.

At first, if a child is leaving the table, we will say something along the lines of: if you are away from your chair, you are showing us that you are finished with your meal and we will put your food away. 

• If the child is not actually full, this is usually all it takes for them to sit down and eat what they need
• If the child really is full, we do not make a big fuss about it. We will allow them to be excused to wash their hands and face and move on with their day.
• If we are having a family meal and everyone is not finished yet, we usually have the children stay at the table until they are excused. (This usually applies specifically to suppertime when we are all eating together because we want to enforce family mealtimes as a social time for everyone in the family.)

4. If a child wants seconds of something they like, they need to eat everything on their plate

If a child is struggling to eat something, such as their helping of coleslaw they may not like as much as the chicken, but are asking for seconds, we help them to finish what is on their plate.

This might seem to contradict our first rule, but we wanted to have a rule that ensured our children were trying different foods, especially because these are often the vegetables, and not just knowing they can fill up on what they are used to.

This will sometimes mean us taking some of what they are struggling with away, realizing we may have given them too much of this particular food, removing some of what is offensive to the child, such as the peppers in the breakfast hash, and then helping them to eat the food mixed with something they do like.

If the child decides they do not actually want seconds, we stick to not pressuring them to finish their plate.

Sometimes the child may become upset, which is when we will calmly say, that's fine if you don't want to eat anymore, you don't have to. But if you do want some more chicken, you need to eat some more of this. It's your choice.

It is always up to the child to decide if they want to eat the rest of their food and have seconds or to leave the table. If they do have seconds, we do not force them to have more of what they struggled to eat in their first helping.


I know these rules may not work for everyone, but they have really taken the pressure off of us, and honestly given our children the responsibility they deserve to eat what their bodies need while ensuring they develop healthy eating habits.

I will have to write a separate post on how we approach feeding our babies specifically, as the rules are a little different at a younger age.


What are some ways you enforce healthy eating habits in your home? Do you have any rules for making mealtime a little less stressful? I would love to hear from you!


Want to dive into respectful parenting but do not know where to start, or where to go from here? Check out some of the books that I have found most helpful:

Secret of Childhood - Maria Montessori | No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline With No Shame - Janet Lansbury | The Absorbent Mind - Maria Montessori | Unconditional Parenting - Alfie Kohn | Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child - John Gottman, Phd




Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. I would also love to hear any suggestions for posts you would like me to write about. And if you are interested in following along in our daily adventures, follow us on Instagram where I post daily.

God bless,
Olivia Fischer