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Survival Strategies
Adoption UK's Survival Strategies are suggestions, some serious, some lighthearted, to help you get through the day, provided by members of the online community.
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Chaotic mealtimes These are things we have done in the past here.
1. Separate the children- 1 adult to 1 child.
If you are a single mum then the children eat separately. Forget ‘eat all together’ - build up to this later. This is all about control- control of you and control over themselves. If our daughter is really kicking off about something then we take her dinner away and she is allowed to have a ham sandwich (she likes these.) Any more alternatives make her worse.
2. Spend some time each day doing something fun at the table - dominos, draw a picture, finger paints, musical chairs round the table etc.
3. Get the teddies and dolls out and plastic picnic stuff and play picnics, play menus and cafes, make cakes and let them ‘help’, play supermarkets etc.
4. Take them to the greengrocer section of Tesco and get them to choose fruit to make a fruit salad or fruity jelly. Get them to cut the fruit (with help) and put it in the bowl. They then serve it and you all eat it together.
In our experience - behaving as badly as they do might do a bit to shock them but they are more likely to laugh, get over silly and then the whole palava backfires. Think that they are like babies. My birth child is 19 months old. She is in the high chair. She gets fed the first three to four mouthfuls and then she likes to have a go at feeding herself. Her food is cut up small with a mixture of meats and veg, lunches she picks at on her own and then, by dinner time she is hungry and will eat more. She has cutlery for her size of hands, and a bib. She squawks when she wants the next thing and we talk to her in a sing song voice and say things like "Oh, would you like some yoghurt and banana?", "Is that what you are saying?" Sure enough she nods, claps and laughs and says "ps" (which means please). When she has had her fill and we are eating we either let her down to play near us or she is feeding herself some bits of blueberry and delighting herself with the way they squidge! Perhaps getting them to feed a dolly and doing some regression with them - you feeding them one at a time and playing ‘babies at feeding time’ might help things rather.
from Dimples
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