Did you have to clean your plate as a child?

That's how it was at our house, too. I'll never forget having to eat another pancake because I used too much syrup!

And I make a solemn oath that I will NEVER do that to my children in my household. Being forced to "clean my plate" as a child had nothing but negative side effects. I literally had to gag down food that I didn't like. How is forcing someone to gag down food actually supposed to be good for it. As a result, there are foods to this day that I refuse to eat, mostly because they have bad memories attached to them. Get over yourself, your kid isn't going to like everything (more leftovers for you anyway). Second, because I had a trained aversion to not wasting food, I became a big-time over eater.

Besides, that's what leftovers are for. At a young age, I learned how to make myself a sandwich anyway, so "going to bed" hungry was always an empty threat at best.

yeah I can see how that could happen if parents forced us to eat everything, I don't think my parents were trying to punish by making me clean my plate but we were a poor family and they thought the more we ate at meal time the less chance we woud get hungry in between,, I would never force child either.

because i pour foods for my self then i should eat it all

Not always, but frequently.

My mom knew that I didn't have a strong appietite, as long as I ate something, she was happy.

My mom was less inclined to make me eat everything than my dad was. However, in the end they both just made sure I ate what I needed without forcing food down my throat. Ultimately I ended up a healthier weight than most people I know who were forced to eat everything,, regardless of whether they were full.

If I didn't, I got the same story each time about there are children starving in China.

In our family it was children going hungry right here in Ukraine, but they would throw in Africa every now and then.

Thanks, that gave me an idea for a question

Good! I am always happy to be an inspiration. Hahaha ;-)

but i didn't some of the time.

there was hardly any food on my plate, so i ate all of it.

I would eat all my food anyways unless it was hamburger helper....I HATE it.

Yes, but we as individuals put on our plates what we wanted and we could eat as much as we wanted, but if you put it on your plate....you ate, or you got it ice box cold the first thing at your next meal.....and you didn't eat any of it till you finished the cold left-over. We did NOT waste Food....period!

Same here Stoney. We took what we wanted, but if we took it...we ate it.

Precisely

But I still did

We had to at least take one bite of everything and stop when we were full

As a result I was a fat kid growing up.But,not anymore! I never made my kids eat everything on their plates and they were not fat kids,I learned from my childhood.I was picked on as a fat kid and didn't want that for my kids.

But my family is Danish so that was never a problem we did anyways lol

we never had snacks as a child, we always had 3 meals a day but very seldom did we have anything in between.

My family is completely different my parents would always make dinner and every once in awhile breakfast or lunch but the kitchen was aways open so you could eat whenever you wanted to my whole family is like that.

But I often didn't.

We were supposed to and the parents made ugly threats if we didn't, but we didn't always clean our plates

That was a big thing in our house.

i had to have little portions and if i wanted more then i could get more