Q. We have such a time with transitions with our four-year-old. Almost every day the transition to the table for dinner is a battle, as well as trying to get her to sit and eat. She just wants to goof around, so that she doesn’t eat enough and is hungry later. We’ve tried a number of tactics from always giving her a five-minute warning to getting her involved in setting the table. We’ve also tried the “We will wait” and “When are you are ready to join us?” approaches, and the sterner “Sit down now!” Nothing seems to work. Help!

Panelists Chad Stefanyak and Denise Continenza urged the four-year-old’s parents to pick their battles. “Is this the battle they want to have right now?” they both asked.

Continenza said the parents should start with smaller goals and increase their expectations over time: “This doesn’t have to be now.”

Panelist Mike Daniels said that the child and her parents are going through an adjustment period regarding eating times and food: “When infants are born, they need to be fed when they need to be fed. They control the schedule. Now the parents are picking the time and place.”

Panelist Erin Stalsitz said that when the parents tell the four-year-old that they will wait for her to eat, they are giving over complete control to the child.

The panelists agreed that what the parents should want is for the child to go to the dinner table, and want to be there. There was discussion on how to make that happen.

“The dinner table environment needs to be inviting and engaging,” panelist Pam Wallace said. “Do something that holds the child’s attention. That’s what restaurants do.”

Daniels said that the table needs to be put in a different context: “Sit down at the table at a different time of day and play a game with the girl, or just use the table is a normal place to sit not related to dinnertime.”

“It may just be the child,” panelist Joanne Raftas said, adding, “Since nothing has worked, it just may be that the child is hyperactive.”

Raftas asked if the child’s behavior at dinner is indicative of her behavior all the time: “Is there something ese we should be looking at?”

This week’s panel: Pam Wallace, program coordinator, Project Child, a program of Valley Youth House; Denise Continenza, extension educator; Chad Stefanyak, school counselor; Mike Daniels, LCSW, Psychotherapist; Erin Stalsitz, Lehigh Children & Youth, and Joanne Raftas, Northampton Community College, independent counselor.

Have a question? Email: projectchild@projectchildlv.org

The Family Project is a collaboration of the Lehigh Valley Press Focus section and Valley Youth House’s Project Child.

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