Last year, Sam went on a dinner strike that just about did me in. The wonderful Dina Rose talked me off the ledge and gave me some strategies that really worked.
But even today, dinner is just not Sam’s thing.
The same probably goes for many other young kids: It’s the end of a long (possibly nap-free) day. They’re done with sitting still, with being told what to do, with keeping it together. In Sam’s case, his appetite is largest between about 7am-3pm—exactly when he’s expending the most energy.
So come dinnertime, I try to cut him some slack. The rules still apply: You have to join the family at the dinner table, you eat what the family eats, you use manners, and you ask to be excused. And no snacks in the hour before dinner except veggies.
Yet frequently, Sam will take only a few bites. And some nights, he doesn’t take any bites at all.
I no longer freak out about this (okay, sometimes when I’ve spent a long time preparing a really good meal, I inwardly freak out a little bit).
One tactic that eases my frustration: I save his plate of food. And if he comes back to the kitchen later saying he’s hungry, I heat it back up for him. I do this in a very matter-of-fact way, not as a punishment.
Yes, there are some nights when he is not pleased with this arrangement (and there are some nights when I simply forget and his meal gets tossed—or eaten by my husband). But most nights, he accepts it.
Like last night, when, after eating only a few bites at dinnertime, he ate his entire plate of (reheated) spaghetti with meat sauce an hour later. Then he asked for (and ate!) a second helping.
The way I see it, Sam may not have enough focus or appetite for our 6pm family dinnertime. But that doesn’t mean he should miss out on dinner.
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I wrote this post as a participant in the 
Before kids, family dinner went something like this: My husband and I would cook a meal together, talking in great detail about our respective days like we had all the time in the world (because we did). Then we’d take our steaming plates of food out to the futon couch and watch “Party of Five”. Yes, we’re that old. (And no, we don’t have a futon couch anymore.)
The universal truth is that family dinner can be challenging–and many nights, not much fun–when you have small kids. Our cozy 8:00 dinner-for-two has turned into 5:30 mayhem-for-four. We’ve slogged through some tough evenings together around the table. But we’re consistent because we know it matters.
