Question
Dinner time with our 2 1/2 year old twins is really stressful. It seems that it always ends up with my husband coaxing them to eat every bite, sometimes spoon-feeding them, bribing them with promises of fruit if they finish it all, and the list goes on. Occasionally they receive a spank on the bottom for playing with their food too much (smashing it after being told not to, throwing it, etc.). Overall I am just frustrated. I don't even want to sit at the dinner table once I've finished and my husband and kids are still going at it for the next 30 minutes. It's not all fighting, just a lot of pulling teeth because my husband wants them to eat their nutritious dinner, and of course so do I. We really need to have family dinner time together - I don't have time to do separate mealtimes or the energy to run back and forth between two tables to separate them from us, either. I want to enjoy our family meal time together and not coax/punish/beg/bribe through every single meal. We need a strategy we can stick through to teach our kids what is and isn't okay at the table, and to get them to eat without so much drama.
