[alt text: a 4-panel comic by @introvertdoodles, which is titled “Not ‘Appropriate’”. The first panel depicts a child wearing a very creative and unique outfit, and their parent is pointing at them and saying, “You can’t wear that to church.” The child is replying, “Why? All my bits are covered.” In the second panel, the same child and a grandparent are eating dinner at a dining room table, and the grandparent is saying, “You aren’t excused until you eat everything on your plate.” The child is replying, “Why? I’m full.” In the third panel, the same child is holding a stuff animal, and a different parent is telling them, “You’re too old to be carrying that toy around.” The child is replying, “Why? The tag just says ‘ages 3 plus.’” In the fourth and final panel, the same child is sitting across from a school principal in the principal’s office. The principal is saying, “You can’t argue with the teacher.” The child is replying, “Why? He was wrong.”]
I’d say the odds of kids doing that are pretty slim, they usually aren’t that strategic when it comes to food. But even if it were the case, it’s still no reason to control kids’ food intake during mealtime. That’s just abusive and is going to give them issues with food.
Kids are generally actually quite good at regulating their food intake naturally in ways that parents often don’t understand. Adults tend to think in terms of roughly balanced meals for every meal, but kids often tend to favor one particular food at a time, achieving balance of nutrition over the course of the week. Especially when they’re younger, it’s often very chaotic what kids want to eat at a given time. They might love something one day and hate it the next. Their taste and palate are still developing, and it’s a parent’s job to be flexible rather than a child’s job to follow arbitrary food rules.
Tell me you don’t have kids without telling me you don’t have kids…
I do have a kid. We give our son a variety of foods and let him decide what he wants to eat. He eats a lot of different kinds of foods (big fan of Indian food atm), and the foods he wants to eat change from one day to the next. Treats are reserved for special occasions, mostly because those in particular can have a pretty significant impact on brain chemistry.
Forcing kids to eat is very well known to be a very bad idea.
@Malfeasant I’m happily childfree and know from having been around all sorts of kids (such as my violent childhood bullies) and even my mother telling me about what she did as a kid (like putting a bit of cereal in a bowl with a dribble of milk and setting it in the sink) that kids can be manipulative… the question is when are they honest? That I can never get a good read… I don’t want the headache that would come with finding out!
@expr
This is just taking a very antagonistic view towards kids. Manipulation is learned behavior and says much more about the parent than the child.
But honestly, it’s besides the point. This point is that it’s wrong to force kids to eat food barring medical situations.