Do you think it's crazy when parents don't feed their child dinner as a form of punishment?

If done regularly, it can be considered child abuse. I can’t imagine using that form of punishment.

Olden days? Gee, now I feel old.
Yeah it’s a pretty stupid punishment, but then again so is the you can’t leave the dinner table till you’ve finished thing. Eating food is not a chore, nor should it be a privilege.

Never did this with my children. Although it might have been a good idea, since they loved food so much, but not here.

And, yes, it’s crazy.

Yes, it’s crazy.

We got sent from the table if we wouldn’t behave.

When everyone else was done, we would be allowed to sit back down and finish our meal, or if it was a particularly egregious offense we would be fed in the back porch with the animals.

Food should never be used for punishment or reward.

Yes. Crazy.

@jonsblond true, but sitting at the table with the family carries responsibilities too. If you are going to make the meal an unenjoyable experience for the rest of the family, you can eat it somewhere or sometime else.

I call that fuckin bullshit, pure and simple.

@WestRiverrat I agree with you. But according to your example, you were still fed even though it wasn’t at the table. I’m speaking of not letting a child eat at all as a form of punishment. As in “you’re going to bed without any supper because you hit Timmy on the head”.

Never actually knew anyone who did that. Creepy! I may have seen it on TV in a play or something like that, but never actually read or heard of people doing it. What kind of parent would do something like that?

crazy no, abusive yes, stupid absolutely

Yes, I think strengthening the association of food with reward and punishment is a bad idea and can help cause obesity.

I think it really depends on why. I’ve seen kids on “the nanny” who would throw a tantrum and throw their food. If they are going to use it as a weapon than a little hunger for the night should have them thinking clearer about how to properly use their food.
Thankfully I have never had to use such a technique on my kids, nor has it been used on us. No matter how upset I ever got with my kids I made sure they got their meals every day. As already pointed out, food is not a priviledge. However sweets are. I would never have a problem with taking sweets away for bad behavior or for acting up at the dinner table. Its not necessary they get that.

Yes, I think it is crazy.

I had a professor once who told a story of her brother hating a particular dish their mom made. He would purposely act up so he would be sent to his room without supper. Haha. Smart kid. I just hope he had a stash of candy upstairs or something.

My mom was and is crazy. Hence understandable that she pulled the punishment of no food for a week.

I was out of town and hired a nanny I thought I could trust. She made Persian food that my son couldn’t stand. She made him eat it cold for breakfast. He had a substitute at school that day and threw a fit and got sent home from school and the nanny from hell didn’t tell me until I got home. This was 20+ years ago, But it still pisses me off to this day!

@judi I think that is horrible, I would still be pissed also. I almost put in my answer how I think force feeding is crazy too. Making children eat something they hate, or finishing all the food on their plate. That is like a torture for me. My SIL still hates her mom for telling the nuns at one school she attended to make sure she ate her entire lunch, and the nuns did. And she threw up almost every day for months.

When I first met the grandmother of two of the children I fostered and ultimately adopted, she wouldn’t make the children, 2 and 3 years old, sit down to eat their dinner and would fix them toast or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before bed when she had them. She was a wonderful old woman and was really trying so hard. We talked about her letting them get up without eating and then getting what they wanted before bed. I was dealing with the aftermath of her bad habits.

She told me she had a 13 year old son who was going to ride his bike to the company store to pick up a Lilt Perm for a neighbor in the coal camp where they lived. He came in the kitchen while she was preparing dinner and told her the neighbor had asked him to do her the favor. My children’s grandmother said she told her son to hurry home because supper was nearly ready. He tried to pinch a piece of chicken as he walked by the stove and she swatted his hand away and told him no food until supper.

He was hit by a drunk driver on the way to the store and was thrown, bicycle and all, into a dry creek bed off a bridge and died instantly. She cried and asked me what one bite of chicken would have hurt? She said she’d feel guilty about that until the day she died and could never tell her grandchildren no when they said they were hungry.

When God let me be their Mommy, I never forgot that story and never made eating an issue of punishment. I don’t know if it was right or wrong, I tried to teach them to eat healthy and they are healthy now, but that damn story has always stuck with me and I say if you are hungry; eat.

I never understood it. I would never use that kind of punishment on my children. I’d take away certain privileges like watching t.v. or playing with their video games, not depriving them of something they need. I like some old-fashioned values and practices, but this sort of thing is not one of them.

@comity What kind of parent would do something like that? The kind of parents that grew up in the Great Depression and learned that value of food increases with its lack of availability.

@partyrock A child being sent from the table without supper because of poor behavior was meant to learn the value of good behavior, with not feeling hungry as the reward. A child being denied food after they’ve rejected perfectly good food was meant to learn that food was valuable. A child being denied food between meals was meant to understand that the available food needs to be shared amongst all those being served.

Today these practices are used by abusive persons for days and weeks on end for the power of it. Any practice used for the power of it is a bad practice.

Today’s parents, in well-fed areas of the world, tend to use food as food and other forms of discipline for transgressions.

@DaphneT I never heard that explanation for not eating between meals before, very interesting. The sentence I always think of relating to that is, “you’ll ruin your dinner,” or just that it was simply bad manners to eat without everyone expected for dinner present. My husband’s mom waits until she is famished sometimes to eat with her husband when he gets home. I would never do that, I would at least have a snack or a bite to hold me.

That happened to me if I refused to eat what was served to me and pouted about it. I remember a turkey soup that looked unappetizing to me. Towards the end of the meal, my mom let me have another chance. I ate the soup and thought it was the best soup I ever had. Lesson learned? Try it before you complain.

I agree with the comments that argue using food as a punishment is never good. I agree with @WestRiverrat that if you need to punish a child’s behaviour at dinner time, remove them and their food to another place. I also don’t agree with making children stay at the table until they have finished food. I still feel sick when I think about having to eat boiled fish. I remember an aunt, who wasn’t really a cruel person, making me sit at a dinner table for hours until I ate that rotten stuff.

@JLeslie my parents were feeding 9 children, my uncles and aunts had 9 or 7 or 11 or 15. Sharing was an issue. Food costs money that was hard come by, so we had to learn somehow that we had to value the food, the money and the work that went into both. My parents used whatever technique got the point across.

@DaphneT In your situation, where food was more scarce, waiting to eat together and the importance of sharing at mealtime makes sense to me.

Learning the value of food by making a child finish their food never makes sense to me, and neither does sending a child off without supper. Well, I should not say never, some kids want to go back to playing, or some other activity, and may barely take a bite of dinner, then I can understand parents being frustrated the child is not eating when they know the child should eat a little more, but I also think a lot of parents are really bad at judging the right amount of food for a young child. Generally though, kids eat when they are hungry. I wish I still only ate when I was hungry, I was much happier with my weight when I did. I can see the huge difference it makes to have the habit of knowing when you are hungry and eating because one thinks they should or because they like the taste of something. I never did that when I was young.

Yes, I think it’s ludicrous. There’s plenty of other ways for a kid to learn from their misbehaviour