10 // My child literally won’t sit for 5 minutes...HELP!
My child literally won’t sit for 5 minutes...HELP!
How to help your kids GET S.E.A.T.E.D. (so that they will actually eat before they get up from the table next time!)
Struggling with getting your kid to stay seated at meal times?
This listener submitted question asked how she could get her kids to stay at the table and engage in the family meal. To help with both the listener's 18 month old and four year old, Ashley shares how to GET S.E.A.T.E.D.!
This episode defines each of the steps in GET S.E.A.T.E.D. so that you:
know exactly what to do to bring your child to the table
set appropriate boundaries and expectations around meal times
offer your child(ren) the social, emotional, and developmental support they need to not just survive but thrive at meal times
Have a question you want to Ask Ashley? Record it here, and she will answer it live on an upcoming episode!
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] No matter the age or gender of your child, wrangling our kids is not a small feat. We know to get them to just sit in. We can spend a tremendous amount of effort, not just getting our kids to the table, but also getting them to stay at the table. And especially if it's the dinnertime meal. I know that I am not the only mom who wants to ensure their child is going to go to bed with a full belly.
[00:00:25] So in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to get your child to both sit and stay seated. And I want to walk you through. My acronym that I think will be really helpful for reminding you how you can help get your kids seated and enjoy your meal alongside them.
[00:00:44] Hey mama, I'm Ashley, and welcome to the veggies. And for two podcast in this podcast, you will find simple menu. Kitchen organizational systems spelled out for mom life and feeding tips and tricks that are both evidence-based and grace placed. I believe that you can find flexibility when it comes to feeding your [00:01:00] family so that you can feel calm, capable, and connected in the kitchen as a registered dietician and Christian mom of three myself, and want you to break free from the mealtime battles and to feel equipped while feeding your kids all day long, pull up a stool at my kitchen counter.
[00:01:12] And let me pour you a cup of coffee and say a quick prayer. It's time to chat about the mealtime messes moments and ministry of motherhood.
[00:01:24] Hi, I have a four year old and 18 month old at home, and I'm wondering if you can share some tips on how to keep my 18 month old seated and engaged in her high chair while we have a family meal. And if you have any tips on keeping my four-year-old engaged and seated in his chair, I'll take those two.
[00:01:41] Thanks. Well, first of all, to kick off today's episode, thank you so much brief for sending me a message on SpeakPipe. I love getting to connect with you guys. And hear your listener submitted questions. So I really appreciate you taking the time to do so. If any of you ever have a question, it leaves you 90 seconds to leave [00:02:00] me a voicemail and share whatever details you'd like to, with a question that you would like me to answer live on an episode.
[00:02:06] Feel free to go over to veggies and virtue.com backslash ask hyphen Ashley. You are welcome to leave me a message there anytime. So Bree, thanks so much for asking that question because. How to get our kids seated and to stay seated regardless of their age and stage is such a common problem. It's one that I hear time and time again from parents.
[00:02:28] And I would love to dive into some strategies and my get seated acronym that will be super helpful for you and your families, working through what your best next step is to ensure that your child is supported and ultimately seated for the next family. As all of us know, we can do a lot of different things to help get healthy food on the table and expose our kids to new foods and help them learn to like other foods and get the nutritional variety and all these things.
[00:02:55] But if we cannot get our. To sit and eat [00:03:00] becomes really challenging to accomplish some of those bigger goals. So often some of the low hanging fruit to help families have some more instant wins with what's happening at the table is to get their family to actually stay at the table. And so in today's episode, I want to address.
[00:03:18] How do we get our kids to stay seated at the table? And in order to do that, we need to acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of reasons why kids might be getting up prematurely from meals, and we'll dive into what some of these are in this episode, so that we can troubleshoot them and come up with.
[00:03:35] Strategies and solutions for helping your child get seated. So what I want to do is go ahead and dive into an acronym I came up with to walk you through. But I think the most important steps are to help your child get seated and ultimately stay seated. If you are a note taker, you will probably want to jot some of these down.
[00:03:55] So go ahead and, and get a pen and a piece of paper, open up the notes tab on your phone. If you have a [00:04:00] free hand and start writing some of these down and that's because I'm going to walk you through. The word seeded, S C a T E D. And I'm going to give you what each of those letters stands for in this acronym, but to get us started, I want to talk about getting started.
[00:04:16] They get the get and get seated, and that is, we want to go and get our kids. We want to give them a warning that it is about to be a mealtime. It might be that you're getting them up in the morning and preparing them for the day before breakfast. This might be a transitional time or a task that you're giving them.
[00:04:35] You need to put up your toys or it's time to wash our hands or please come help set the table depending on which developmental stage your child is at, you might need to help them kind of close out one activity in order to help them transition and get to the table so that they're not distracted by the toys that they still have out, or kind of preoccupied with an activity that they don't feel closure with.
[00:04:57] So you want to go and get your kids. [00:05:00] This might be verbally. If they have enough independence and follow through to get themselves to the table, this might require a little bit more energy on your part to help them transition successfully, but ultimately to get our kids seated at the table, we need to get them to the table.
[00:05:17] And when I say this, I want you to make a note because this is very important. We want to get them to the table when the meal is. This is not forever. This is not necessarily a behavior that we want to be the way our family operates later on in life. But if you are a mom with littles, I want you to think about getting your child to the table.
[00:05:38] When the meal is ready. If you were in the habit of setting your child in their seat before a meal has begun. Most likely you are losing some of that very valuable real estate of when you can have your child sit and stay seated, because if you are putting them in their seat, even 2, 3, 5, 7, you know, just a few [00:06:00] minutes before a meal begins or before the elements of the meal have been served or before you've cut up their food and put it before.
[00:06:07] That might be the only 2, 3, 5, 7 minutes that you're going to get with them staying seated. And so when you're going to get your kid, make sure that your helping pace them appropriately so that they have time to clean up, or they have time to wash their hands, or they have time to get to the table by the time that you are actually ready to offer them.
[00:06:27] Again, as kids get older, you can engage them more in some of the tasks to help serve their family and to help prepare the meal, set the table, some of these other activities. But in general, when we see this problem with this child getting up prematurely, it's not with the older children that we tend to see this with typically.
[00:06:44] The families that have 2, 3, 4 year olds. This is the season that we tend to see that being more of a problem. So what I want you to be thinking about is how are you setting them up for success in getting them to the table and be really intentional with that first [00:07:00] step before you jump into any of the next step.
[00:07:02] Now, if you haven't already. Written seated down your page or on your phone notes. I want you to write S E a T E D. And I'm going to tell you what each of these stands for to help set you up for success in getting your child seated. So now we have your child at the table, you have put them in their seat.
[00:07:22] And what I want you to think about is the script. What are you going to say? Whichever one resonates with you script saying, however you want to write it down for. This is where we are going to think about what we say so that we are very, very clear with our words and that the script that you use is the same every time.
[00:07:45] This is not engaging in a power struggle. This is not you feeling that you need to defend your decision. Each time your child gets down. I want you to be really consistent with what you say to your child, so that they know a very predictable response from you [00:08:00] will come. If and when they try and get up from the table.
[00:08:03] So in order to set those really clear boundaries, I want you to come up with a saying or a script similar to this that is very, very clear to your child. This is insert the meal. This is dinner. Let's say this is dinner. When you get up from the table, you're telling me that you're all done. We will not be eating again until breakfast for bedtime.
[00:08:26] Talking about whether or not you should do a bedtime snack is a different episode for a different day. What I want you to focus on for the context of this episode is coming up with what you were going to say, or coming up with a very short, maybe two sentence script that you say every single time your child is trying to make that decision on whether or not they want to get up from the table.
[00:08:46] So if you're saying this is breakfast, when you get up from the table, you're telling me that you are all done, we will not be eating again until morning. You're not engaging in a power struggle. You are clearly articulating to them, the [00:09:00] boundaries around the mealtime. So the S and getting stated is to have your script for what you are going to say, ready?
[00:09:09] This is going to help your child understand if I get out of my seat, that means that the meal is. That means that I will not get to eat again until the next meal or snack. So if your child does circle back five minutes later, 20 minutes later saying, they're hungry. You go back to the very consistent thing that you say at the end of the meal, being that I'm sorry, you chose to get up from the table and say that you were done.
[00:09:34] The meal is over. We will have a chance to eat. Whatever that next eating opportunity is this is not reactive feeding. We are responsive theaters. That is the feeding approach that I recommend with the division of responsibility, but it does not mean that we are responding to their hunger, that they chose a different time that they wanted to eat.
[00:09:52] What we want to do is we want to be equipping our kids to tune into their hunger and fullness cues and to take time [00:10:00] to be at the table and to give their bodies. To eat. So another thing you might choose to say is we're giving our bodies time to eat. You can choose whether or not you want to eat at the table, but I'd like for us to enjoy this time together and give our bodies the opportunity to eat or something to that effect.
[00:10:17] So that they're realizing that there's a time and a space, one that is for your family to enjoy the time together. But also, so it's time for them to tune in with their bodies and to check in, am I hungry? Am I full? There will be times that our kids do not have. That makes them feel like I'm done at the table.
[00:10:34] I don't have any jobs to do here. I don't feel like eating anyway. And that's great if they know that they are not hungry, we want them to honor those hunger and fullness cues, but we also want them to recognize that there's other objectives for a family meal. There's other reasons that we can sit at the table and enjoy one another's company, even if we're choosing not to eat.
[00:10:53] So make sure that you're coming up with something to say that can be really. And repeated each [00:11:00] time next, the E is expectations. This is setting realistic expectations based on your child's age. In general, there's a few different kind of strategies for calculating this. And of course, every kid is unique and every meal is really unique.
[00:11:16] You know, sometimes breakfast is, or just a quicker meal than let's say a family dinner. But in general, I want you to think about the goal of your child's sitting at the table for two to five minutes per year of life. So if your child is two, you might start at the goal of having them stay seated for four minutes and you might be working up to the goal of maybe.
[00:11:36] Or if you have a four year old, let's say you might be starting at the goal of having them sit for eight minutes and stay at the table for upwards of 20 minutes so that they could maybe go and sit at a fast casual restaurant with you a little bit easier and kind of develop that skill so that they can sit longer.
[00:11:52] Another option that sometimes is given as a reference is five minutes plus your child's year of age. So that would kind of [00:12:00] give you the average of the numbers. I just suggested. But I think using the lower end to set your initial goal, if this is something that you're currently struggling with, and then working up to that higher number, as your goal develops the skill where they feel like they can actually stay seated for a longer window of time, the a and C did is to avoid pressure.
[00:12:22] It is really easy to think. We need to convince our kids to stay seated because they need to. And so instead of teaching our child a boundary that is very clear, and that is consistent with the feeding relationship that we're trying to reinforce with the division of responsibility. If we don't avoid pressure, and we're trying to use pressure as a tactic to getting them to stay, it can really come back and bite us and getting Arctic to stay because it's also provoking and anxiety response for them that I know that I have to take this number of bites until I'm allowed to get.
[00:12:56] Or, you know, the goal of me staying at the table is [00:13:00] that I eat however much. My mom or dad is telling me I have to eat. And that's one not tuning them in with their hunger and fullness cues. That's not empowering them and equipping them with an eating competence that they know their bodies best. They know how much fuel they need to feed themselves.
[00:13:14] And they know when to stop eating and yet they can still sit there politely. And engage with the family, even if they're choosing not to eat. So in the little window of time that you have, let's say with that goal of the expectation for their age, try your very, very best to avoid using pressure as a tactic to get them to stay the tea and seated is talk.
[00:13:38] And this might seem really basic because yes, talking can help buy you some time. If you're trying to work up. Your child. And Lee's sitting at the table for three minutes and you're trying to work up to, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 minutes. But I want you to think about what kind of things that you're saying and how they might actually be.
[00:13:55] Creating problems. It could be things that you're saying that you're, you know, you are [00:14:00] inadvertently using pressure and you're kind of like threatening. Well, if you don't sit and eat, then there's this consequence or it might be something distracting, like, well, after dinner time, we're going to go take a bath.
[00:14:11] Do you want to use your new bath mom? And then our kid, all of a sudden is very distracted and wants to get up from the table because they're excited about this new basketball and then going to take a bath. And they really didn't like the meal that you were offering anyways. So they might as well get up and go move on to the next thing.
[00:14:23] So when we talk, we want to think about how we can engage our kids. I had a great episode recently with Jennifer from, to gather moments shared some. Productive intentional ways to talk with our families at the table that you can reference back to that episode. I'll put it in the show notes, but let's think about how we're talking that we're not threatening our kids with bites or with bribes, and we're not distracting them with what's to come, but that we're just really present in the moment.
[00:14:48] And that moves us into E in seated, which the second E which is explore. And that's where we want to be using language. And we want to be talking with them in a way that helps them really [00:15:00] explore. Their food because as we probe their curiosity, we can really start to buy ourselves some time. And ultimately that's what a lot of these tactics we obvi we often try as parents is we're just trying to buy ourselves some time and maybe a couple of bites for lucky, but ultimately if we help encourage our kids to explore the food in front of them and just ask questions, this is so much more effective.
[00:15:22] Then pushing a polite bite. We can talk with them about the foods that they love and what they love about them and how it's prepared and what they like about it. Or you can talk to them. And this again is a, for another episode, but you can talk to them about the foods that they're learning to like and what do they look like and what do they smell like?
[00:15:38] And have you touched it and look how funny this is, and you can just talk and engage in an exp and encourage them to explore in a way that will naturally help them go from. Almost immediately saying they're all done. As soon as they sit down to kind of getting over the hump. So the eating experience begets more eating and whether they're just exploring and not [00:16:00] eating it, do not be defeated.
[00:16:01] There's progress that we can be made there. But as I mentioned in the beginning, we have to get our child to stay seated before we can make some of those next step. And the last letter in this acronym for get seated is D and that's distractions. And there's obviously so many distractions. We cannot control.
[00:16:18] We cannot control if the doorbell rings, when we're sitting down to dinner and some of the distractions we can control, like if we have the TV on, or, you know, our child wants to hop up and change the song that's playing on Alexa, or they bring a toy to the table. There's a lot of these distractions that in another episode, we'll cover how to handle eliminating distractions at night.
[00:16:36] But the one that I really want us to think about for the context of this episode is the distraction of not being properly supported in their seat, because if you were going through the other aspects of get seated that I already mentioned in this acronym, and you're still not feeling like you're successful and you're still seeing your child really squirm and wiggle and just be unsettled at the table.
[00:16:57] Chances are, they are not getting the [00:17:00] proper support. And so it's becoming a distraction to them because any of us know, if we've sat at a tall bar stool, when our feet dangle, it's very distracting. If we don't have that foot rest to put our feet on, it can be very distracting for us to focus on our phone, our food, and ultimately on feeding ourselves, you don't need to necessarily know all the physiological reasons for why.
[00:17:19] Happens and why this is needed. But what I want you to look at is maybe snap a picture of your child in their seat and identify do they have 90, 90, 90. That's what we're looking for. We're looking for 90 degrees. 90 degrees at the knees, 90 degrees at the ankles. If they have one of these that they have two of the three of these, you'll see that they have some support, but chances are, they're still shy in some of the other support that they need.
[00:17:45] And so, you know, when you think about your. Setting at a child's table. One of those really small tables, that's often where that 90, 90, 90 is really well reinforced, which can often be why kids prefer those kids' tables to say an adult table with adult [00:18:00] chairs. What happens with this age of when kids tend to struggle most with getting up from the table prematurely it's often when we've transitioned them out of their infant.
[00:18:10] And into a full-size chair, we may have given him a booster. We may have gotten rid of the, you know, buckling them in and some of these other things. But what we don't realize is that they still need a lot of support. So if your child is still in a high chair or maybe you're in the market for a high-tech.
[00:18:26] I would really recommend that you look for one like a Stokey trip trap that can grow with your child. Even as an adult, I can fit on it and I can sit comfortably with it. It has adjustable bases for the seat, but also foot rests. So as your child continues to grow, they won't outgrow the chair the way they may be would an infant or a toddler specific height.
[00:18:49] So that's a great option. However, it's a very expensive chair and I know that it isn't always within the budget, but something I think more families are becoming privy to, especially if you maybe had the Ikea [00:19:00] highchair, is that you can assemble a strap for your child to put their feet on the same concept applies.
[00:19:06] If this is your. Chair at home. If your child is dangling their feet, you can either use an old receiving blanket because goodness knows. We probably all have several leftover from when our children are babies. And you can just wrap it around the legs of the chair to provide some resistance for your child to put their feet on.
[00:19:24] You can use an exercise band. You can normally get like packs of them for, you know, multiple chairs or multiple kids in your family for not too expensive and just loop it over the front. You can also use something like a kitchen stool, or honestly, just for proof of concept, you can stack some Amazon boxes and let your kids decorate them.
[00:19:43] Each, having their own little makeshift stepstool underneath the table that gives their feet a place to rest and ultimately gives them the support they need so that they aren't distracted. By their feet dangling. And from a feeding perspective, it's giving them the support that their body [00:20:00] demands, honestly, for them to be able to eat effectively and safely and to stay seated for longer, because they're not trying to get out of this uncomfortable position.
[00:20:10] So if you have transitioned them out of the chair, I would find some sort of support. For their feet, but if they are in a high chair, make sure that, you know, if you maybe haven't adjusted it in a while or you haven't, I recommend quarterly looking at our kids and making sure that we're just like, we have to adjust their car seats.
[00:20:29] We need to adjust. There are seats that they're sending out at mealtimes. And so if that isn't something that you've done in awhile, take a look at your child in their high chair and make sure that you have given them that proper support so that all of these steps and getting seated are as effective as.
[00:20:46] So there are so many aspects that we could have talked about to help our child get seated, seated, and ultimately stay seated today. But I hope that this acronym get seated has really helped spell out for you how [00:21:00] to work through some of the most common areas and issues that families face in getting their child to stay seated.
[00:21:05] So that you can start small, again, set really realistic expectations for your child. Based on their age. I encourage that you maybe get a sand timer, help them to have a visual cue. So they know where they're at, you know, be super congratulatory and get them a lot of praise when they work up to these goals.
[00:21:23] Are able to stay at the table for longer amounts of time, but I want to encourage you between now and the episode airing next week. I want you to think about which area that maybe you need to focus on first again, starting with getting your child to the table and working through the acronym seated and see if maybe you do need to get a sand timer.
[00:21:42] And I have a lot of these linked on my Amazon shop that I'll put in the show. Or maybe you need to order an exercise band or reevaluate if your child needs a new booster because they've outgrown theirs, or maybe you just need to use the Amazon box that you already have sitting in your entryway and turn it into a stool [00:22:00] to give them support.
[00:22:01] But I really want you to take some action and see if in the next week, can you see some small, yet instant wins on getting your child to stay. We are already over the 20 minute mark. So I want to just say a quick prayer as we sign off, and then I will see you back here next week, where we talk about a similar, but still a little bit different challenge with when your child gets down from a meal and then asks to get back up, but in your lap.
[00:22:28] So make sure that you turn back in next week for that. Lauren, thank you for the time we get together at the table, whether it be two minutes, 10 minutes or 20 minutes, God, I pray that you bless these families. I pray that you equip these moms with confidence to enjoy the time that they have with their kids to engage in that time and to help just expose and explore all the amazing foods that you've seen.
[00:22:51] But I pray that you will nourish the families and whatever time that they get and that you will help children to get seated so that they may taste and [00:23:00] see how good you are and how faithful you are to provide for our. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.
[00:23:08] It has been a joy having you on podcast today. And if you've enjoyed it as well, I have a quick favor to ask. Do you mind hopping over to apple podcasts and leaving me a written review? This will only take you a hot second, but it truly blesses me every time I get to read one of you right over there. And it allows me to bless others through this.
[00:23:27] And the episodes to come. The other thing that you can do is to take a screenshot of this episode and tag me over on Instagram app veggies in virtue, I would love to see what action steps that you're taking from this episode, and also to support your family in the journey moving forward until next time.
[00:23:41] Thanks for coming over to chat at my kitchen counter. Remember that you will always have a seat and a snack waiting for you here. .
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