Is it right to enforce Table Manners for a 4 years old...
vikramkiran posted on Thu, 01/05/2012 - 11:03
My daughter is 4 but still she will never have her meals sitting on the Dining table. She moves around the whole house while having her food. Because of this habit of hers she makes a mess of the whole house and I have to keep cleaning. Will it be right to force her to sit properly on the Dining chair and have her meals. If I do so she simply denies to eat and cries. My hubby was saying that its too early enforce table manner for her.
What do other moms do, I really wonder.
I think that your child is roaming around as eating as she has been doing this from the very beginning. You might have been feeding her this way. Now it is difficult to get her to sit at the dining table and eat all of a sudden. You can make her do so slowly.
The best way would be that have family meals together on the dinning table and give a chair to your daughter as well. This will make her feel and know that this is how everyone eat. I am telling this as I have always fed my son at one place. Previously he used to sit on his high chair and now he has his dinning chair. And we make it a point that one of the meal of the day all of us have together, mostly its dinner. Now my son always prefers to sit at a place and have his meals.
I also did let Aryan eat whichever way he wanted as he is a fussy eater. Only when he turned 5 I started enforcing table manners. Still he would not sit to finish his entire meat but yes he does sit and eat properly for a while till he feels hungry.
We have been having family dinner but Aryan would just keep sitting without eating that is what forced me to let him eat whichever way he wants.