There are two simple concepts that solve almost every dinnertime struggle. The first is the Division of Responsibility in Feeding - giving the right responsibilities to the right people (hint: it’s not your job to make sure your kid cleans their plate). The second is using the Limit Setting Formula to set clear limits that turn mealtime chaos into a routine your kid can actually learn from.

Dinner doesn’t have to be so dramatic. Today, I’ll help you create a dinner routine that gives less chaos and more peace, connection, joy, and ease.

You’ll Learn:

• Common mistakes that parents make at dinner (and what to do instead)
• How to deal with picky eating, using the Division of Responsibility in Feeding
• What to do about the mealtime behaviors that are driving you nuts
• Example limits and scripts for common dinnertime problems
• When to get professional help for your picky eater

Read the full show notes here.

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Related Episodes & Resources:

• Episode 66: Peaceful Dinners & Picky Eaters
• Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter
• Episode 2.34: Stress-Free Mornings With Kids: The 3-Step Easy Morning Routine
• Episode 2.35: Bedtime Routine Falling Apart? Here's How to Set (and Hold) Bedtime Limits
• Episode 2.36: Screen Time Battles? Here's How to Set Effective Screen Time Limits
• Episode 2.37: Homework Struggles Solved: Afternoon Routines and Limits That Motivate Kids
• Episode 2.38: How to Get Kids to Do Chores Without Nagging (Age-by-Age Guide)

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✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Toolkit here

Connect With Darlynn:

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
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• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host, I'm Darlynn Childress, and I'm a life and parenting coach. And today I want to talk about dinner and particularly

just making meals in general more peaceful so that you can have your kids like come to the table, stay on their bottom, eat what you put in front of them, say

thank you at the end, take their plate to the counter, and dinner doesn't have to be so dramatic. That's my hope you because I know that all of you want that when it

comes to dinner. You want peace and ease and connection instead of chaos and shenanigans and complaining and griping. This is the episode for

you if you want to create a new routine around dinner so that you get that peace and that connection and that joy and that ease. This episode is part of that

practical series I've been doing over the last couple of weeks where I've been talking about your mornings, your bedtime, your homework routine, your screen routine, your

chores, really kind of building this family routine in your day so that your life moves with ease. And meals are another one of those friction

points. I was telling a client about this series and she said, oh, you're doing all the pain points of a family. And that's exactly right. I'm giving you

language and strategies to set boundaries and create those routines around these friction points in your family so that you don't have so much

frustration. That's the hardest part as a parent is constantly fighting or arguing with your kids. And so this episode is part of that practical series. So if you're

having other parts of your family routine that are challenging, like your mornings are hard, screen time is hard, bedtime is hard, go back and listen to a couple of those other episodes and you'll find

that I'm teaching that limit setting formula over and over and over again in these various scenarios. So for today, I want to show you how to apply

the limit setting formula to your dinner routine, to your meals, to your pattern with your family. Because what I want you to have is that

Peaceful family dinner where there's— everyone is sitting down, kids eat what's offered, you don't spend the meal being annoyed or yelling at your kids. So I'm going to teach you how to

create that routine using the Limit Setting Formula. Here's how the episode is going to go. I'm going to first talk about the common mistakes that parents make around mealtimes and how

to avoid them. I'm going to talk about picky eating in general and what your responsibility is when it comes to feeding your kids and what your kids'

responsibility is as well. So we're going to divide that responsibility and help you understand what you need to do, and then allowing your kids

to figure out their responsibility when it comes to eating. I'm going to teach you how to use the limit setting formula to set up your meal times, and then we're going to talk specific behaviors, and I'm going to give

you very specific scripts and strategies for handling sibling squabbles, getting up and down, complaining about the food, Bringing toys to the table,

different behaviors like that so that you have really specific scripts in mind and strategies so that when you encounter those behaviors, you know exactly what to say and how to

handle it. I love making this podcast so practical and useful and giving those scripts to you so that you feel empowered and have an idea

of what you're supposed to say in these moments. I'm not just doing tips, I'm actually giving you scripts in this episode. I think it's gonna be really, really useful. For you. Let's start

first with common mistakes or pitfalls that parents make. One is really practical, but it's something that parents do a lot, and that's giving a

big snack too close to dinner. If your kid has crackers and a juice box and a cheese stick 45 minutes before

dinner, they may not actually be hungry when you're serving them their dinner. So really thinking about the pacing, allowing probably 90 minutes between snack and

dinner so that you have kids that are really actually hungry for that meal. Hunger's a great motivator to sit at a table. Hunger's a great motivator to have, you know,

overcome your frustration or your disgust about something and eat it anyway because you're actually hungry. Giving your kids some time before meals will

make it so that they are more likely to eat that meal. A lot of times we give our kids a snack and then we serve them dinner and they don't want it or they're complaining about it

and we think of them as being defiant or having picky eating and really it's just a scheduling issue more than anything else. Another pitfall that parents make often is

expecting their kids to sit too long at dinner. And you're probably wondering, okay, well, what is the right expectation? Expectation. So as an

adult, I make dinner for my family, and we're all adults now. So when we go to sit down at the dinner table, dinner takes like 20 to 30 minutes to

eat. It really doesn't take that long to eat the food. Now, if we have company or, you know, we have gotten a good conversation, maybe we linger

over the meal a little bit closer to 30 to 40 minutes, but that's adults. Right? That's having quality conversations. With little kids, kids under 8, you can

expect maybe about 8 minutes that they're gonna sit at that table. If they're a slow eater or they're a talker or they

don't mind sitting still, you may get more time. But if you have an active kid, a kid under 8, really busy, always wanting to play, always wanting to move their body, Shooting

for 8 to 10 minutes is probably about right, and you can even teach your kids that they have to sit at the table for 8 minutes even if they're done

eating, that they can't be excused from the table until they've sat there for 8 minutes. So that limit, just a little preview, would be you're welcome to be excused and

go play toys as long as you've sat here for 8 minutes until the timer goes off. Now, kids that are over 8, they can stay at the table probably

maybe 15 minutes to 20 minutes. They're kind of chewing a little bit slower. They're eating a little bit more. They're consuming more calories at each meal. So it may take them a little bit longer. They

might want to talk a little bit, especially if you train them early on to sit on their bottom and to sit at the table. Then you might get that quality time. Teenagers,

really tricky. They often don't want to sit with us at all. We have to set very strong boundaries. around dinner and getting them to sit with us at the table. Teenagers tend to eat a

big meal right after school. They basically eat a very late lunch. So when it comes to dinner, they're not really ready for dinner. But you can

still expect them to sit with you. Another pitfall that a lot of parents make is making a separate meal for their kids. Having chicken nuggets for the kids and you're

eating spaghetti and meatballs or you're you're serving a pizza bagel or you're serving mac and cheese. And I understand the desire to get your kids

the calories and get them the nutrients and make it easy. But in general, that means that you've become a short-order cook. You've basically running a restaurant.

You're asking everybody what they want. You're making a bunch of meals. That's pretty stressful. And it doesn't give your child the opportunity to learn how to

sit and be a little bit uncomfortable and try new foods and be part of the community and all the things that we get from eating together. Giving your child their

preferred food all of the time does create less emotional resilience. It gives them less opportunity to grow in their ability to handle

frustration. And there's probably less nutritional value in some of the alternative foods that you're giving to your kids instead of the whole food and the unprocessed food that you're

cooking for Another mistake parents make is bribing or coaxing your kid to eat something like, just try one more bite, or, this is so good, you'll love it. That turns the table into

a negotiation, a transaction where you're kind of figuring out the magic number that they have to eat, like how many bites and all of those things. And it does not help

your child learn to listen to their own intuition about whether their body's hungry, how hungry is it, and it goes against sort of that picky eating division of responsibility that I'm going to

teach you today. Another thing that makes dinner unpleasant for you and your kids is when you're nagging your kids about manners. You're telling them which— they need to use their silverware. You're telling them to get their elbows off the

table. You're telling them to chew with their mouth closed. And when you're kind of nagging about the manners while you're sitting at the table, it makes

it pretty unpleasant and it's not very motivating for your kid to continue to sit there. They're going to try to get that food shoved in so they can be excused. So they don't have to be under your

microscope anymore. Of course, you have to teach your kids manners, but manners are taught through routines and limits and boundaries because your kids need

to have skills. Manners aren't intuitive. They're something that we model and that we practice and that we reinforce over and over and over. In this

episode, I'm going to teach you how to teach manners to your kids by giving the limit setting formula. But you're not going to pick all the manners all at once. You're going to pick one

behavior at a time in order for your kids to learn that one manner, and then you add in another one. It takes time to get your kids to practice the behaviors that

you want. So you're going to use the limit-setting formula to proactively teach those skills instead of nagging and lecturing and criticizing. And then the last thing, of course,

is when parents give up on family dinners altogether because it doesn't feel worth it. You're just, you know, hand everybody whatever food they want. They sit at the kitchen counter, they scoop it up, and you

miss the opportunity to build the skill of connection, the skill of manners, the skill of eating foods that are not your preferred foods. It

just robs you and robs your child of the opportunity to learn these skills and to practice. Because on the other side of all of the trouble with dinner is the

blessings of dinner, where you get to sit at the table and have a quality conversation. And as you do that more and more, your kids learn that that's a really wonderful time to be in connection with their

family. And you'll have many, many wonderful quality conversations as they get older. Putting in that effort now is worth it long-term in order to get

the connection that you want as a family. So let's first talk about picky eating. I do dive deep into this topic specifically on

sensory issues and how to introduce new foods and All of that stuff in episode 66. It's called Peaceful Dinners and Picky Eaters. I highly recommend that you

go back and listen to that episode, but let me summarize it here so that you have a good idea of how to handle picky eating. The approach that I take to managing

kids and their eating is based on Ellen Satter's work, and her concept is called the Division of Responsibility in Feeding Kids. And I love

her approach because it draws a very clean line between what you are responsible for and what your child is responsible for when it comes to eating. It's pretty

simple. She's a nutritionist and a researcher and has done a lot of work on this area and came up with the Division of Responsibility. And so what she says is that you, the

parent, are responsible for what food is served. So you are deciding what you're going to put on that table. You are

deciding when food is served. So that's the rhythm of the schedule, and then where it is eaten. So food's in the car,

you decide that. If food's in the bedroom, you decide that. If food's in the living room, you decide that. You decide where it's eaten, what you serve, and when you serve it. Now, not everyone is

comfortable with this model, and that's okay. If you want an open kitchen and you want grazers and you want to have kids kind of flow in and out of your kitchen and you're not

prioritizing family meals, that's your prerogative. But if you are prioritizing family meals and you want to teach kids how to try new foods, how to trust their intuition,

learn to connect with their hunger, the division of responsibility achieves those goals. So what does this mean practically? It means that you want to

consider what your child likes and make sure they have some options that are available for them to eat at the table,

but you're not catering to their preferred food. So we're not giving them only what they like to eat. We're having something that they want. When

we're planning our menu, we're thinking about like, oh, this kid won't like this, so I'm going to serve bread. And then when the meal is happening, You don't

make them— in this model, you don't make them eat specific foods. You just make sure they get enough calories to feel full. So the

division of responsibility, again, you're determining what is offered, when it's offered, where it can be eaten, and then the child decides whether or not

they're going to eat that food and how much of that food they are going to eat. That means that we're not chasing kids around saying, one more bite, one more bite. You know, that kind of thing. Now

in practice, a lot of parents like to do a no thank you bite, right? So you can leave the table once you've had a no thank you bite and you could create that limit or that boundary. So I had a really picky

eater and I needed to be careful with that kind of rule. So I would have food at the table that he would have a preferred food and then he could eat as much as that. And that preferred food for him

would be offered to everybody. So sometimes it was kind of weird, right? Like if I know one kid's not going to have rice, but I want to have rice, but I know they, Probably need a carbohydrate. I might have

rice and bread at the meal, or maybe I'm serving some kind of a vegetable that they don't care for, and then I'm also serving carrots. So again, I'm deciding what

is on the table, what is available to my kids, and then they're picking what they're going to eat and how much of it. In this model, the suggestion is that you serve food family style. A

lot of us plate our kids' food. We stand at the stovetop and we divvy it up. That is really handy, but it's not great for teaching kids how to be in touch with their belly,

their own amount of food they want to eat, and kind of selecting the food from the table. A family style or buffet style is really good for kids to

take as much as they want, looking at the food, putting it on their plate, and then going back for some more. So of course that's a slower, messier process, but it does bring

everyone together. Everyone is talking about the food. You're passing food across the table. That kind of dynamic is really fun for families. It's messy, it's hard, but as you

get used to it, it is worth it and it helps your kids be making their own choices. And that's the division of responsibility in action. So with limit setting, what does this look like? Right?

It's like, feel free to eat as much or as little from what I've offered for dinner. We're not tracking how much is eaten. We're not negotiating bite by bite. If they

refuse to eat, they refuse to eat. That's allowed. And we just wait until the next meal. So we can just say, yep, no problem, dinner's over, you can eat at the next meal.

Now this means that we have to let our kids be hungry, and that is a little bit scary for us. But one skipped meal does not hurt your kid. A nightly

short-order kitchen teaches a much worse long-term lesson than you Having them not get a preferred food for the night, not get their special meal,

and then be a little bit hungry, that creates that external motivation long-term for them to be more open to trying the food that's on the table. That's what you really

want, and you have to create boundaries around that and let your kids fail in order for them to be more likely to take you up on the offer of what you have available.

Quick note on dessert. I know that people wonder, like, is dessert okay? Should we have dessert every night? It's up to you. In the model that

Ellen Satter created, dessert is not a special category of food. It is on the table and available just like all the other food. Now,

if you only want your kids to have one cookie, you would put enough cookies for everyone to have one cookie out on the table. So if they eat dessert first, in this model, that's

fine. All food is neutral. It's just caloric and they take in what they need. I know that's hard for parents. We worry about carbohydrate and fat and protein

and fiber and all these different factors. In this model, we assume because we're the ones deciding what is available to a kid, that they are gonna get the right

mix of nutrients as they grow. Last note on picky eating. For some kids, picky eating is not a preference. It's not because

they are choosing to not eat a certain food. For some kids, it's a genuine sensory or motor issue, and they're not just like testing

you or trying to assert control over what they eat. If your kid is struggling with texture, smell, gagging, and you've been

consistent with what I'm teaching you and holding those boundaries and you But if you still have picky eating and you still have a lot of resistance around food, then it's important to talk to a

pediatrician or an occupational therapist and get some support in that area. You can go back and listen to episode 66 where I cover this more in detail. Now, okay,

so we have our plan, we're division of responsibility, right? We know we're not going to short order cook anymore. We know what we want. We want to serve our kids dinner 90 minutes after they've eaten their

last snack. Right? We're setting ourselves up. So now what is your plan? Before you create your limits and your rules for dinner, you have to figure

out what those are. What is your plan and what are your rules and what are the behaviors that you wanna work on first? So the first part is pretty simple, just

picking your dinner window and sort of sticking to it, having that rhythm of an afternoon snack, dinner. And then I used to always do a before bed snack.

It was a little bit of a rescue because I had such a picky eater that I knew that I wanted to have him have some food in his belly before bed. And I would also do this division of

responsibility. I picked what was available for that before-bed snack. So, I knew that it would be something that was easy for them to eat. So, it was a little bit of a rescue behavior,

but I also knew that it made bedtime go smoother. I had one kid who ate a lot and one kid who didn't eat much. And so I kind of would balance when I would serve

meals to make sure that kids were getting calories and that they were getting food at a time when they were hungry. So you pick your time that you're going to serve dinner. Try to keep it

about the same time of day. Obviously, it can be very, very different how this looks. If you have sports right around dinnertime, then you're going to have to figure out

how to do it before, do it after. You do a big hearty snack and then you do another. hearty snack and maybe it's not quite this sit-around-the-table meal plan.

That's okay. I don't want you to think you have to do this every single night in order for you to be successful. The truth is you want to pick your limits and then the

nights that you do family dinner, hold your limits. I always think consistency is really hard in families and I don't like to put that on you as a parent, but when you decide you're

having a family dinner, Then you want to be consistent with following through on your limits. So what does that even mean? We have a lot of expectations of our kids. We have a lot

of behaviors that we want them to do, right? We want them to not demand alternative food. We want them to chew with their mouth closed. We want them to stay seated. We want them to use

silverware. We want them to not fight with their siblings, not bring toys to the table, come to the table when they're called, sit properly instead of slouching, kneeling, not putting their elbows on the table,

right? Not rushing, not talking about gross stuff. Cleaning up a spill, saying please and thank you, cleaning up their plate when they're done, right? That's a lot of different behaviors that we want.

There's a lot of expectations when it comes to mealtime, and it's going to take a couple of years to really develop the skill to sit at a table, have

proper manners, know how to pass the butter, whatever, have conversations with adults, have conversations with your siblings. So don't try to

tackle dinner all at one time and all the manners. Pick a few things, work on those for about a week, 10 days, add another one. So for the beginning, I

want you to pick a couple, maybe 3 different manners or behaviors that you want to improve, and then you're going to implement the limit setting formula with those

behaviors. So how does that work? The limit setting formula is kind of a flip of a command and a threat. So a lot of times we'll tell our kids like,

stop doing that, stop spitting out your peas, stop smashing your food, stop bothering your brother, stop playing with

toys at the table, stop blowing bubbles in your milk, right? We're telling our children what we want them to stop doing, or we give them a command. So we're giving our kids a command,

and then a lot of times we add a threat to that, like stop blowing bubbles at the table or your dinner is over. Stop bothering your brother or you're not having books tonight.

That is a command threat. In the limit setting formula, we're flipping our command and our threat into the limit setting formula.

We're saying you can have— so whatever the threat would be, you can have books tonight. Sometimes the thing that we're saying that

they can have is a privilege, like they can go play toys, they can go outside, they can have books tonight. Sometimes it's just having dinner, right? You can sit at this

table, you can have your turn to say your answer. I want to give you examples, exact examples of how to turn a command threat

or a rule into a limit. So let me give you some really specific examples. Imagine your kid keeps getting up and then you're like, sit down

or your dinner is over. The limit, the flip into a limit would be you're welcome to eat dinner as long as your bottom is on the chair. Now what

happens if they get up out of their chair? Dinner is over. And that kind of consequence, that kind of logical next thing that

happens because they didn't listen can be really hard for you. So make sure that whatever you set up in your limit is something that you're actually willing to follow through on. I

am suggesting that a missed meal is not that big of a deal, especially if you know you're going to have a before-bed snack, but that before-bed snack isn't going to take place for another 90 minutes.

Maybe it's an hour between dinner and then this little before-bed snack. And that means you might have a kid who has a hungry belly for a while. That is okay. So when we

Threaten, sit down or your dinner is over. If that's an empty threat, then don't put that into your limit. But if it's real that you really want your kid to learn

that they should sit on their bottom at the table, then that means you're going to have that limit. You're welcome to eat dinner as long as your bottom is on the chair. How about a

kid who keeps leaving the table, right? Or just gets up without being excused. You can't just get up from the table. That's so rude. Don't do that. Right? We like kind of yell at them

because we don't like what their behavior is. Instead, I would love you to flip that into, bud, or hey little sis, you can leave the table once you've asked

to be excused. Come back, sit down, try again. Say, can I be excused? Yes, you can be excused once you put your plate on the counter. So in the limit

setting formula, we're staying really calm and we're not just barking orders, we're not just lecturing, we're having our kids have an experience of that boundary. We're letting

them practice, we're letting them try again, or we're letting them experience that negative consequence. We could also hear someone say like, eat your dinner or you're not getting dessert.

If you wanna connect dessert, you wanna have dessert be part of motivation. If that's the case, you wanna be specific. Feel free to have dessert tonight as long as you have

taken 5 bites of each item or whatever your boundary is. Again, You don't have to have dessert be tied to your food. You don't even have to offer

dessert at all. Dessert doesn't even have to be in consideration. But if you are using dessert, I'd rather you not threaten with it. I'd rather you use it as an actual limit. You can

have dessert as long as— and then what are the conditions that they get dessert? Be specific. Another thing you hear parents is like, use your fork, right? That's a command.

That's disgusting. We always add A lot of commentary to our commands, right? A lot of little lecture and monologuing. It's like, use your fork. How many times do I have to tell you? I've told you

many, many times. The limit would be, you're welcome to eat that chicken as long as you're using your fork. And then give them a chance. If they keep picking it up with their hands, it looks like, oh,

looks like this meal is over, and you put it to the side. So again, you have to be willing to follow through on your limit. Now, what if kids are at the table with toys and you're like, put that toy

away or you're leaving the table? Say, hey, you're welcome to sit here as long as there's no toys at the table. Now, so notice the shape of every one of these. The command version

threatens something bad if they don't comply. The limit version tells them exactly what they're welcome to do, what they get, and then under what condition. So in many ways,

it's the same thing. You're saying the same set of circumstances, you're saying the same conditions. You're flipping it though so that the child receives that information from

the thinking brain instead of the threatening brain. You always want to move your kids into their thinking, their executive functioning, their cause and effect part of their

brain, and move them out of the fear-based or emotional parts of their brain where they make decisions based on emotion and not make decisions based on logic.

Now obviously kids under 6 have a lot of trouble accessing this part of their brain. That's why we're going to have to repeat our limits Pretty often. We're going to have to do a lot of training. So

let's talk about training specific behaviors. How do you get your kid to the table? One thing I love is the question of, do you

want to eat now or do you want to eat in 5 minutes? Oftentimes parents will say, dinner's going to be ready in 5 minutes. And we think that we're giving them

some sort of warning or heads up, but they don't really listen because we haven't asked their brain a question. So again, this example, all

of the limit setting formula, it activates the kid's thinking brain and gets them more engaged. So asking your kid, do you want to eat now or in

5 minutes? They will answer typically in 5 minutes. And then what's cool about this is the brain, their little brain made a

decision. That it was going to eat in 5 minutes. It created almost its own little boundary inside of its brain. So then when you say it's been 5 minutes,

they're like, oh, it triggers a response into them to go to have the meal. So just getting them to the table is really helpful if you prime the brain to

make that decision. A decision primes the brain to actually transition when the time comes. So a warning doesn't really do that. Um, then other thing I'd like to have my

kids do is I wanted them to help set the table. That was one of their chores. So I talked about chores last week. So I would say, do you wanna set the table now or in 5 minutes?

And they'd say in 5 minutes, of course. And then I'd say, okay, it's been 5 minutes. And then they would come and like fill up water cups or get silverware or whatever kind

of responsibility they had, put napkins on the table. And then they were engaged. They're starting to get primed up for having a mealtime. Now, when I first started doing this, I'd say, do you want to do this now

or in 5 minutes? They'd say in 5 minutes, but over time their brain was like, I'm just going to do it now. What difference does it make? So they started to comply earlier, which was even

better right now. What if your kid keeps getting up? I said, you're welcome to eat dinner as long as their bottom is on the chair. This means that you have to be willing to let them make that mistake,

have an empty belly, have a hungry belly for a night. Or for a couple of hours and giving them that chance to have that experience. So chasing them around back to the table,

picking them up, telling them sit down for the 5th time, that isn't how it is going to help your kids learn that they should probably listen and stay seated

in order to eat. Now, if you have timed it properly, they're genuinely hungry and they're motivated to eat. So state that limit At the very start of the meal

and then calmly follow through. The plate goes away or the meal is over for them. Avoid renegotiating every single time they get up.

If it turns into a meltdown over limit, that's okay. That's a normal protest. If I think that I'm gonna get away with breaking the rule and then I

don't get away with it, I'm gonna have emotion about that. So in that moment, you can offer some compassion. You can use the connection tool. I know you really wanted to have dinner right now,

but I only serve kids who are on their bottom and you got up. So dinner's over for you, but we'll have a before-bed snack in a couple hours. You'll be okay. And they have

crying, whatever. It's okay. You just continue to eat your food. If they're really little and you want to rescue them, you can try one more time. You can ask them, do you want to try one more time? You

want to sit on your bottom? Okay, great. Remember, you can You can have dinner as long as you're sitting on your bottom. Show me, sit down first. You're sitting down. Okay, good. Where's your tushy? Right on your chair.

Okay, great. Should I get your food? Yeah. Okay. And you're really slowing that nervous system down. You're letting their little brain catch up to the decision that they're making, that they're

going to stay seated. Don't be afraid to reset your limit, to try again one time, but don't keep doing it over and over and over again.

Give them a chance. If you want to reinforce this limit, if they're having a big meltdown, you can give them a little bit of support, have them try again. If they fail again, I would

call it quits for the night. Now manners and using utensils is one of the things that really drives parents crazy. And I find it really funny because

in our culture as Americans, we have a lot of food that does not require utensils. I just had lunch and I

did not use any silverware because I had a sandwich. But if I had a salad, then I would use a fork. If I had a piece of chicken breast that needed to be cut, I would use a fork

and a knife. And every time I'm making a meal and then sitting to eat it, I'm making a decision in my brain of what I'm going to need.

So I know that I need a spoon if I'm having cereal or yogurt. Or soup because I'm a grown-up and I have a lot of experience and I'm thinking about it. But our kids,

food is just brought to them and they are going to use the easiest utensil that they have, which is their fingers. It is important to

pause and ask kids, is this a finger food or a fork food? Instead of getting mad because they aren't using the proper utensil,

pause. And then ask them, what is this food? So thinking about eating as a skill and that you want to teach your kids the skill. So

like pizza, chicken nuggets, sandwich, use hands, right? Pasta, mac and cheese, a piece of uncut meat, fork. But some food is genuinely

ambiguous. Cut up meat. If it's already cut up, can I use my fingers? No, because it's kind of messy. It's greasy. It has sauce. Mac and cheese. I could use my

fingers, but I wouldn't get that much in a bite. So that's why I use silverware and also keep my hands clean. What about a waffle? Like sometimes it's okay because it's like a

piece of bread and then sometimes it's not. It depends on if it's messy, depends on if there's syrup. So all of these decisions that we're making are very subconscious for us because

we have enough experience. Our kids, on the other hand, don't. You want to inform them of what type of food it is. Ask them to do some thinking. Same with sort of all

manners. Your kids naturally don't know to say please, to say thank you, to ask, please pass this. They reach over somebody, they slouch,

they put their elbows on the table, they pick up their plate and kind of shovel food into their mouths. They don't really know that they need to keep their plate on the table, that they need

to ask permission, that they need to ask for someone to pass the food. They need to say please, say thank you. I taught my kids that they could be excused from the meal

after they say, thank you for dinner, may I be excused? And I just practiced that many times. They would get up and I would say, uh-uh-uh, come back, you're not

excused. And then I say, what do you say? And they say, thank you for dinner, can I be excused? And I'd say, yes, once you have put your plate on the counter. That was for years. And

so I taught that a few times and then it became a habit. And for years I had kids who said thank you for dinner to me every time. So this brings me into complaining

about the food. This is another opportunity to teach manners. When your kid looks at a plate and they're like, oh gross, I'm not eating that. You can just pause and

teach them to swap and just say, listen, it's okay to not look at that food and think it's appealing. not want to eat it. But instead of commenting on

that, you can say, no, thank you. I'd rather not eat that. I'm going to have this instead. You don't have to make a commentary on the food. It is

considered rude or disrespectful, especially to the person who cooked it, because that person put effort into it. So it's a little bit of a lecture, but really

it's more of a coaching conversation. You're teaching this behavior makes sense. I understand why you would do it. But that is considered rude. Do this instead. So we

reflect, we teach, and then we practice. So you say right in that moment, go ahead and practice. Why don't you say out loud, say, thanks for cooking this, but I'm gonna pass on that.

Or, no thank you, I'd rather not try that. Give them the chance to use their new skill. Give them a chance to practice in the moment being polite. That's how manners are taught.

Toys at the table. Super simple limit. You're welcome to sit here as long as there are no toys. If one shows up, you pick it up, you put it to the side. You say, you're welcome to have this toy

after dinner as long as there are no problems during dinner. So you don't need to add a big lecture or anything like that. Sibling fighting. You're welcome to sit with us as long as you're speaking

kindly to your brother. If they keep bickering with each other, you just go to connection. I noticed you two are getting really loud. I wonder if you're both really hungry and that's making it hard for you to control yourself.

You're welcome to sit here as long as you're speaking kindly to each other. If a fight blows up at the whole table, it's okay to end the meal early. Sometimes meals

just go sideways and that's okay. Sometimes you have to just be like, that dinner's over. This is not working. And then they might be really hungry. You might have to say,

we can try again in a few minutes, but I'm not gonna sit at the table with you guys right now. I'm gonna put this food up. You don't even have to have the consequence be for the rest of the night. It can just be

a beat where you pull away and start over and do like a reset or a refresh. There are gonna be nights where you cannot have limits because

you're too tired. They're too tired. They're too hungry. Things have gone sour. You've already had so much conflict and you just wanna get everybody to bed. I want you to feel free

to not have a manner night. You know, you can just be like, listen everybody, let's just get through this dinner. Everyone kind of eat what you want and we're gonna— Try

again tomorrow. So don't get on your case if you want to change your patterns in your family, you want to improve your family rhythm and routine, and you're sticking to it

several nights in a row, and then one night goes sour, or you just don't have it in you and you want to cater and you want to like give everybody food, or you want to order in. That's okay. This is

going to take a long time. You have years with your kids and you get to take that time And go slow in teaching manners and dinner behavior

and meals and overcoming picky eating and all of those things. So don't put too much pressure on yourself. So to wrap up, one thing I do want you to consider

is thinking about the division of responsibility. What would it look like in your family if you decided that you were in charge of what was

offered at a meal, when it was offered, and where it was offered, and then you let it go and you let your kids decide how much of what is offered that they're going to

eat and back off of micromanaging and controlling intake. Just try out the idea. Try it out for one meal

and see how it feels. It might be something you have to work on as a mom or as a dad to release some of the pressure that you feel like, oh, my kid's underweight.

I've got to— Make sure they eat all the calories, or they need more protein, or they need more fat, whatever it is. If your kid needs a lot of protein, serve just protein

and then let them find their way to having the right amount for themselves. I want your kids to build up the behavior

of trusting food, trying food, enjoying food, building a good relationship with food. And part of that is you giving that

responsibility to them of taking care of their own bodies and listening to their own hunger and satisfying that hunger. So try out the idea of the

division of responsibility. And then the second thing is picking one behavior that's driving you crazy at mealtime. I like to say, if I'm angry about a

behavior, it's because I haven't set a good limit. If I have been outside of my boundaries or I haven't communicated or taught my kids the limit around a behavior and I

find myself really angry, it's just a clue to me that I have power over how my family runs and I get to set boundaries and I get to set limits and I get

to follow through with those limits. Thinking about one behavior or 2 behaviors that are driving you crazy— kids getting up, kids smashing food, kids not using the right

silverware, Kids complaining, whatever the behavior is that's driving you nuts, pick one, set a limit around it, and then hold it. You might have to follow through on

that limit, and that means dinner's over for them and that meal goes to the side, and that's okay. Try it out, see how it feels, and notice if over the course of a couple

days that you get improved behavior. I've been teaching this a long time, and I've watched family after family have their kids improve their behavior because of the

Limit Setting Formula. It does work when you do it in one area, it translates to all the other areas and your kids start to learn that they should

listen to you. Not because they're afraid of you, but because it makes the most sense for them that they should listen to you. So Limit Setting Formula, it works when it

comes to mornings, it works at bedtime, it works— Anytime. at homework, it works with screens, it works with chores, and it works with meals. So I

hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share it with a friend. Reach out to me if you have any questions. You can find me on Instagram, you can make a comment on YouTube, or you can

reply to any email that you get from me and I'll reply back. I'm wishing you some peaceful dinners this week and that you enjoy time as a family, and I will

talk to you next week.