Sending kids to bed without dinner

[Cats]

I'm meh on the issue. One the one hand, it can help teach children better eating choices and that sometimes they need to suck it up and deal, but on the other, kids do need that energy. Some of the lack can be made up with a good breakfast in the morning, but if you were in my house growing up, you didn't HAVE that. You made your OWN breakfast, usually a bowl of cereal or a pack of poptarts. THAT'S IT. We weren't allowed to cook until we go older, and since there was nothing for breakfast we were allowed to eat that could be nuked, small cold breakfast it was.

Now I hate to think of my parents of having been intentionally cruel (be cause they weren't), but honestly, I think that was. Lunch was the ONLY guarenteed meal I had of the day sometimes, as I'm a very picky eater. Eventually, we sort of compromised because most of the time I DID eat some of the dinner, usually before some ingredients were added (such as spaghetti with no sauce, turkey without gravy, chop suey with only the sauce and hamburger, etc. For the record, I don't have a food TOUCHING issue in itself, it's the combined flavors I don't like). And if I STILL didn't like what was being served, when I was old enough, I could go make myself a sandwich.

If parents feel the need to send their kids to bed without dinner on frequent occasions, then something needs to be done, because to me, that IS cruel. Once in a while is one thing. All the time is another. As a parent, it is YOUR job to make sure your kids needs are taken care of. Trying to reform a picky eater is hard, but constantly starving them out of dinner shouldn't be happening frequently.

[Sylvia727]

Generally, I think children are entitled to proper food, shelter and love. Depriving a child of the basics such as sending them to bed without dinner (for any reason) or making them sleep on the floor or whatever else have you is an extreme measure. Most parents should be able to raise a child their entire childhood without having to resort to these punishments more than twice or thrice*. However, some children's personalities or circumstances or whatever combination make them difficult to raise. And in these abnormal circumstances, abnormal punishments may be what works. As long as the kid is safe, healthy, and happy, twelve hours without food once in a while won't hurt them. I trust the parents to evaluate each individual instance and decide in the child's best interests.

*I Am Not A Child Psychologist; 74% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[Seshat]

A well-nourished healthy child isn't going to suffer anything except a bit of hunger by going to bed without dinner, especially if the parents ensure that breakfast is something nutritious and in suitable quantity for the kid.

That said, for most parents it should be only a 'picky eater' strategem, and if it doesn't work after a few attempts, they should probably be talking to their family doctor or some other qualified advisor.

However, some parents get a bad roll of the dice.

I believe that sociopathy, serial killers, psychopaths, all that stuff, are probably a continuum. At one end are the ones who are all 'born' that way, and no amount of good upbringing could prevent it. At the other end are the ones who would have been just fine with normal parents.
I suspect it's a bell curve, so most of these personalities are a mix of born and made.

So some parents - perfectly normal parents who are doing nothing 'wrong' - have just ended up with a kid who is, to put it politely, "a handful". These parents need every parenting tool they can get, and they need community support. Sending a baby sociopath to bed without supper isn't going to hurt them - as long as the lesson learned is 'there are boundaries' and not 'might makes right'.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Actually, my kid ends up going sans supper more times than I would like. It's not punishment, she just decides she's not interested in eating. I do make a point to make sure she has food I know she likes, and I reward her for trying new stuff. But sometimes she just gets stubborn and won't eat, or kicks up a fuss and demands something else. Well, no, you eat what I prepare.

I'm sure not going to start off on a road where it's a debate every night, or a power struggle. The only debate here is "take it or leave it."

I do remind he that there will be no snacks if she doesn't eat her supper. She does understand that. Usually, at that point, she'll just start bargaining over how much she has to eat.

But it is sure not a punishment, at least on purpose. It's not presented that way, I see it as more like learning about cause and effect.

Now, if she was being disrespectful or disruptive of us or our dinner hour, I can see where dismissing a kid from the table hungry might be a punishment fitting the crime. I would think that would be a lesson on a visceral, primal level, too. If you want to be part of the tribe, and eat with the tribe, then you respect the tribe. And twelve hours of hunger, most of which you miss because you're sleeping, is hardly that much of a dire hardship, provided you have no health problems.

[DrFaroohk]

Withhold supper should NEVER be used as a punishment, and food should always be made available, but you cannot force the child to eat, which I feel would be a worse punishment than starvation for a night.

We had a problem for a long time with my 5 year old stepson where he would cconstantly disrupt dinner. He'd sit down, take a bite, get up, run around and yell and scream, come back and get another bite, run around and yell and scream...

So then we made some rules for dinner: He has to SIT DOWN and eat, and not get up until his meal is finished. He has to sit properly in his chair, he can't stand up and jump in his chair and tip it and bounce around. He is free to join in the table conversation, but he is not to yell randomness and indulge in lots of baby talk. Once he starts acting like a 2 year old, dinner is over.

He loses out on his supper a LOT. And without finishing his supper, he doesn't get a snack afterwards either. It may seem harsh, and honestly it's not working all that well, but I don't necessarily see his failure to learn as my problem. He wants to starve it's his problem. He'll learn one way or another.

[guywithashovel]

Given how liberal the members of this board tend to be on social issues, I'm a bit suprised that many of them would be okay with such a punishment in most circumstances. I say that not to condemn anyone. It's just an observation.

I know that many people say that you can never know exactly how you would handle kids until you've had them, but I doubt I'd ever use this. If the kid was acting up during a meal time, I might send him to his room and say, "When you're ready to act properly, you can come out and eat."

Maybe I'm too soft, but I have always hated being extremely hungry. I don't know if I'd be able to inflict that on a kid.

[kiwi]

Maybe I'm too soft, but I have always hated being extremely hungry. I don't know if I'd be able to inflict that on a kid.

My mum would give us 30 minutes to get going with our food, if we were still acting up then it was put in the fridge for us to eat the next night.

We were given the chance to have dinner, it was our choice to eat and be happy or to put up a fuss and face the consequences of that choice. Needless to say we rarely choice to go hungry.

I think there are two issues here, 1 punishing your kid by not giving it any food for dinner, and 2 a kid being naughty and not eating the food that it was given.
I don't agree with punishing a child by refusing to feed it dinner, I do however agree that giving the child a resonable chance to eat and then taking it away is acceptable because the first gives the child no choice, the second does.

[Slytovhand]

Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

[kiwi]

eat a lump of cold poison,

you got poison, I would have given my left arm for poison, all we got to eat was a clip around the ear