I understand that the French have great school lunches and a time to relax, visit with friends, and enjoy the meal. I work at a middle school and our lunches are a frantic rush. I hate it and don't think that it's healthy - it's just one more stress. I spoke to administration and they said heck no, there is no way they would even lengthen lunch. Kids already had too much time - it was hard to keep them under control for 30 minutes.

30 minutes sounds adequate for lunch but take away a restroom break, time to walk to the cafeteria, time to wait in line, and cleanup time and suddenly for some students, there is a 5 minute lunch - no time to eat decent food. Processed food is faster to scarf down with your hands without excess cutting or chewing.

Oh yes, and we often must also tutor students during lunch.

I agree with this approach with kids. Kids often use meal time as a way to control. Many parents are blind to that. My best friend's kid started to complain or refuse food when he was 3 (makes a pouty face, folds arms across his chest at the table). Her response was to beg him to eat! "mommy will cry if you don't". So embarrassing! I said ignore him. If he doesn't eat it, he will eat his breakfast for sure. Of course, I would get the "you're not a mother! You don't understand the importance of nutrition!" OK....

Same kid, I have him at my home for the day. He doesn't like my lunch. Fine. I say, that's all there is. I ignored the pout and continued on with my meal. No discussion. At some point he gave in and ate. I didn't get angry and I didn't even praise him for finishing. We had a nice day (in fact he told me it was "the best day" aw).

At dinner with his mom and dad that same day, he did his routine. She begged. He pouted. So stupid. So are the parents who let kids order them to make individual meals like the parents are cooks in a restaurant. Just bad news.

Why would you allow these small humans to make demands on you that in any other context you would see as bad manners?

PS. Kids behaving like the 3 year old did is normal. He is testing boundaries. Trying to control his world. It is the adults job to teach them what is acceptablle and pouting and refusing good food is not acceptable.

I expect my kids to at least take a taste of what I serve. If they don't want what is served at mealtime I don't make them something else. They have to wait until the next meal or snack. Thay are pretty good at trying new things, although the older two seem to have gotten picky and bratty about food since starting school. Refusing to eat things they normally do, saying things are yucky, etc. So many rotten behaviors they're picking up from other kids now.

I haven't read Le Billion's book, but I did read a related book -- Pamela Druckerman's, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting -- after reading a column of hers in the NYT, and found it very interesting.

My parents NEVER made us eat. If we didn't eat then we didn't eat. But, no filling up on dessert (if there was any) if we didn't eat dinner.

There were only two rules:

First; we had to try something before saying that we didn't like it. Just one spoonful was enough. And if we didn't like it that was okay. But, don't call it yucky without trying.

Second, if we took it from the serving plate/bowl and put it on our plate then we had to finish it. No wasting food!

And, lastly, not a rule about eating; just a rule about good manners. Never, but never, complain about food when you are a guest at someone else's house. And, yes, Sunday dinner at Grandma's was being a guest. Thank Grandma for the nice meal she prepared, even if you didn't like anything but the apple pie for dessert.

While today there are some foods that I just don't like (cilantro - stay away from me! You are just too pungent) and some foods that I will never try (a dog is a friend, not food), overall, I would say that I am interested in trying new and different food things because food was never forced on me.

P.S. Jen, holy cow! only 30 minutes for lunch? That is stressful! Last year I was working at a company in mid-town Manhattan which only wanted us to take a 30-minute lunch. And, yea, add all that you said, plus the 10-minute waiting for the elevator/riding it up down and up and you are lucky if you can scarf down a lunch in 5 minutes.

I understand that the French have great school lunches and a time to relax, visit with friends, and enjoy the meal. I work at a middle school and our lunches are a frantic rush. I hate it and don't think that it's healthy - it's just one more stress. I spoke to administration and they said heck no, there is no way they would even lengthen lunch. Kids already had too much time - it was hard to keep them under control for 30 minutes.

30 minutes sounds adequate for lunch but take away a restroom break, time to walk to the cafeteria, time to wait in line, and cleanup time and suddenly for some students, there is a 5 minute lunch - no time to eat decent food. Processed food is faster to scarf down with your hands without excess cutting or chewing.

Oh yes, and we often must also tutor students during lunch.

Posted by: Jen at February 14, 2016 9:41 AM

The length of the lunch is determined by the overall number of hours of instruction, mandated by state law, and the maximum length of the school day negotiated by the teachers union.

You have met the enemy, and they are you.....

I was in high school when they cut the lunch hour to 25 minutes due to those Union negotiations. Our schools consisted of three buildings. Two of which were a block away from the one that held the lunch room. Add in a five minute walk each way, and see how little time you have.

Yes and no.

Yes most of the time. However, some "pickiness" is medical - or the byproduct of medical treatment. We've got that going on and, believe me, if I had a penny for everyone who thought I just didn't try introducing each food enough times, I could buy Donald Trump.

Some medicines mess with things, and some kids have trouble chewing (again, medical stuff). Often picky eating is just one issue they face out of many. People who get all in the kids' (and parents') faces telling them whats what really doesn't help.

Obviously, there's the rude factor of judging what you don't know and telling people they are doing things wrong when you don't have a clue what's really going on, but people do it. All. The. Time.

My kids are awesome in most all things, but NOT in eating.

That said, I don't just give in, even though it IS medical. We are working with doctors to adjust medications and find ways to make fewer food-related side effects, etc. This even includes orthodontia and teeth extraction. But to the world, my kids look all normal.

Children should be taught good manners. Those manners should include politely refusing stuff they don't want to eat.

Food should never be used as either a reward or punishment, because,95 percent of first world hunger is carb cravings, and not dietary need at all.

As a parent you need to pick your battles. And you aren't going to win all of them.

Parents who insist on compliance get it, as long as they are looking, but they also tend,to raise sneaky kids who want to be out from under the parents thumb as soon as possible.

Not necessarily a bad thing but detrimental to a long term respectful friendship with them as adults.

I remember getting a break at lunch and I really liked that. At my one job I could generally eat and then take ~30 minute walk. That was real nice. In jr high I think we got 40 minutes-- maybe 45 and it was ok. It was plenty...well definitively if you brought your lunch (which I did). You hang around the cafeteria and the little court yard in front of it. HS was 25 minutes - it was 3 shifts. First shift was 25 minutes lunch then 50 minutes of class, 2nd shift was 25min class, 25 lunch, 25 min more in that same class... I got an off campus pass so I went and ate in my truck...both jr and sr year none of my friends had the same lunch shift as me.

Back to the original topic. My parents had a policy that I had to try it....and if I tried that meant I liked well enough to be served unless I had problems later. I had a number of digestive problems as a kid...most before I remember. I was a picky eater. Mostly I got variations on what the rest of the family ate...for example if my mom made tacos before adding the spices meat for my tacos would be removed from the pan...spices used to trip up my GI tract sometimes...if I get a lot now they still do, though more likely I'll just get cramps. And part of, I think, is my family just sucks at cooking somethings. Lets take broccoli for example. I like what I get at the cafeteria at work, especially before they started buying the stocky stuff, I had some this evening at a restaurant and thought it was fine....but what my mother serves is just this nasty bitter stuff that I can hardly manage to swallow. Both just blanched.

Why is everyone talking about kids? Amy, we're having to go through this with one of our cats at the moment, she's getting on a bit and her teeth went bad last year. We got them fixed (two extractions and a clean). For the last month the rule has been if she wants food, she gets food, whatever she wants, until she put back the weight she lost.

Well, she's gained back most of the weight so I'm starting to retrain her into normal eating habits. "You will eat your dry food puss, tin later" The discipline is not fun, she looks so upset. But has to be done.

Kids already had too much time - it was hard to keep them under control for 30 minutes.

Why? We had an hour for lunch in middle school and managed to keep it together.

Ahh, the ironies of life Kevin. Once you remove all discipline from the schools you find you have a discipline problem. Gee, who could have foreseen that?

Ahh, the ironies of life Kevin. Once you remove all discipline from the schools you find you have a discipline problem. Gee, who could have foreseen that?

I don't understand, unless they're not being taught even the most rudimentary basics at ...

Oh.

I've heard more than once that small kids who balk at unfamiliar foods are just following their good instincts - that is, their bodies are trying to avoid getting poisoned.

Trouble is, of course, that a child's dislike of vegetables exists in every community that is not vegetarian. (Not with EVERY kid, but still...)

So, if it's OK for poor families to order their kids to clean their plates or starve until the next meal, when they'll get the same food again (as in one famous scene in "All-of-a-Kind Family"), why isn't it OK for non-poor families to do that? Amy Dacyczyn took it one step further, in "The Tightwad Gazette" - in her essay "War and Peas," she said that any contrary kid of hers who didn't eat a familiar food got punished. (If it was an unfamiliar food, they had to eat at least a small amount.) If it was something they'd eaten before and still disliked, she'd praise them for eating it without complaint.

More on that:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/06/24/because_you_can.html

Excerpt, before the parts about Amy D:

John Rosemond's way...is to put 1/4 ounce of each entree on the plate - such as one green bean, one tiny bit of potato, and a similar portion of hamburger. THEN you say "clean your plate." If the child refuses, no second helpings. That way, at least, there's no parental focus on meat vs. vegetables. (Dr. Spock pointed out that saying "finish your vegetables first" only would make the vegetables all the more undesirable.) If the child goes to bed hungry, well, that's her choice.

Lenona, in my mind. It is perfectly ok for rich, poor, or middle class parents to have any food rules they want.
Just be prepared if the requirements are too strict or bizarre for you kids to develop an unhealthy focus on what ever you restrict them from just like locking the liquor cabinet.

Hello eating disorders.

Also be prepared for them to resent you when they are an adult and do exactly the opposite with their kids.

My mother had atrocious taste in children's clothing. It was stuck in 1934. I bore the brunt of that until high school. Swore I would never do to my daughter what was done to me.

Also be prepared for them to resent you when they are an adult and do exactly the opposite with their kids.
__________________________________

I'm reasonably sure there was nothing bizarre or extreme about either Amy D's methods - or Rosemond's. Rosemond has several grandchildren, but if either of his two kids (born in 1969 and 1972) chose parenting styles opposite from his, I'm sure his enemies would have let everyone know by now.

As far as Amy D's kids go - I don't know if she has grandchildren, but here are the interviews with her three daughters (she also has three sons). They don't talk about their parents' rules at mealtimes, but it's clear they very much appreciated being taught the importance of "waste not, want not." Especially the youngest, Laura. They pretty much all implied that they will raise their kids the same way. They were all in their 20s at the time.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.consumers.frugal-living/bkLq9D8mAFc

Surprise! Today's op-ed at the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/opinion/why-poor-children-cant-be-picky-eaters.html?_r=0

No comments, oddly!

Excerpt:

...Describing her grocery-shopping routine, a poor mother from South Boston with a 3-year-old son quickly highlighted waste: “I get my food stamps on the 5th and I try to make them last for a month, but that’s really difficult because toddlers waste a lot of food.” When another poor mother’s kids refuse what she cooks, she thinks of things she could have purchased instead. In the direst cases, parents worried that if children rejected food, someone else in the family would go without.

The problem isn’t poor children. According to psychologists, most children treat new foods with trepidation. Often, they accept novel offerings only after eight to 15 attempts. But kids across the world learn to like a staggering array of edibles, in large part by tasting foods repeatedly. When children try a variety of options, they approach unfamiliar foods less gingerly. Experiences stick. Preferences learned in childhood often persist.

For the poor parents I met, children’s food rejections cost too much. To avoid risking waste, these parents fall back on their children’s preferences. As the mother of the 3 year old said: “Trying to get him to eat vegetables or anything like that is really hard. I just get stuff that he likes, which isn’t always the best stuff.” Like many children, her son prefers foods that are bland and sweet. Unable to afford the luxury of meals he won’t consume, she opts for mac and cheese...

(snip)