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Keeping a clean table

Anonymous posted in Parenting 5 years ago
5 years ago

My son is 7 years old and when he eats he makes a big mess around his plate and under the table. how can I teach him to eat without making a mess?

Answer

At that age, it's all about learning how to better control the utensils and incentivizing our children to really focus when we're eating, versus just trying to eat or eat as fast as possible. One thing to be sure to do is to stop any kind of distraction, so if there is an iPad or anything like this make sure that it’s off so the child is totally focused, sit with him and watch him eat. So you can encourage him to be more intentional when he's using his fork or knife or spoon, you can help him in holding it if you feel that maybe it's the way that he's holding the utensil. And then also it's about incentivizing the child, so you can create different games where you know if he makes it through so many meals with little, mess only then he gets to choose a dessert, or if there's another sibling maybe there can be a little bit of a game to see who can be cleaner the way they're eating and whoever wins the certain number of times during the week, You can incentivize it by maybe choosing who chooses the next meal, what were the dessert or maybe a special treat, or something whatever is best for your family. It's important that the chart is a physical thing that they can see and that they can keep track of and remember. Another way to do it is to actually if you are a family that is okay with using money. You can stack like 10 or five dirhams And if you feel like the behavior is really good, you can leave all the dirham there, and at the end, they get to keep it at the end of the week they can buy something with it. Or if not, you can be one that adds so if you think that they're doing a really good job you could add one every time, they've done a good job like maybe 10 minutes into the meal 20 minutes into the meal half an hour which keeps the child very present and aware of what they're doing as well as incentivizing them to adopt this focus and behavior.

Taylor Perramond The Elegance Advisor Etiquette Expert
5 years ago
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