Do you make your children clear their plate?

There is something that I’ve never really understood.

Parents who make their children eat everything that is on their plates.

I just don’t get it.

When I a kid, my parents did this to me.

I had to everything on my plate. If I didn’t it was brought back up for breakfast the next day.

In fact, one time, I remember being made to sit in the garden until I’d finished every last scrap on my plate.

I used to quite like this one though because it meant I could throw what I didn’t want to eat into the hedge and my parents would be none the wiser!

Surely as a nation who is experiencing an apparent obesity crisis, making children clear their plates, is doing more harm and than good.

By forcing a child to effectively overeat, how will they learn when they’re full and that they’ve had enough if they’re just made to eat everything?

Yes, I encourage my children to eat well, but I don’t force them to eat when they’re not hungry or when they’ve had enough.

They’ve never been big eaters. For breakfast, R will usually ask for a bagel, but we don’t give her the whole bagel as she simply won’t eat it. We slice it in half, toast and butter it, then cut in half again so R has two halves of a half. Some days she’ll eat it all, other days she’ll just eat one half of a half (a quarter of the whole bagel).

M is the same. She either has one Weetabix, again she’d never eat two, or she has a small croissant or jam on toast. Like R, some days, M will eat it all, others she won’t.

Before they go to school, I always ask them if they want anything else to eat. Sometimes they’ll have a banana, other days an orange or some jelly, whereas some days they won’t have anything else.

When it comes to their packed lunches, M doesn’t really eat much of it. She’s never eaten all of her sandwiches. Usually just a bite or two, but instead she’ll eat the fruit we’ve put in or the yoghurt. R tends to eat most of her lunch.

When they come home from school, they’re never ravenous, and that tells me that what they have eaten was enough for them.

If I cook them a meal or if we go out somewhere for food, I let them eat however much or as little as they want. At the end of the day children just don’t have the mentality to starve themselves at this age. They both have good appetites, they like to snack throughout the day which is fine and I make sure they don’t overeat. I’m in no way feeding them chocolate and cake all day!

I’d love hear thoughts on this! Do you make your children eat everything on their plates?