It used to be breakfast. FDH makes the KIDS coffee with special creamer. They slurp it. Then he makes a nice huge breakfast (weekends) and YSD always took more than her share of bacon and ate fried eggs with her hands (at age 11). I've learned to ignore the coffee slurping and general annoyance over coffee being served to kids. I made her stop eating eggs with her hands by calling her out and asking her to use a fork. And now, I immediately take my allotted bacon off the communal plate immediately so I don't get stiffed-- also instructed MSD to do the same.

In general, I can't stand it when FDH doesn't plate the food. Everyone is passing stuff every two minutes. And YSD uses her dirty hands to help her get the food onto her plate. So I now plate the salads. And whenever possible, I encourage FDH to plate the dinner too. I use the excuse that it's faster and that it leaves less dishes for me.

Ugh, any skid meal is the worst meal.

SD13 is a greedy little (or not so much little) piggy, she shovels in the food, slurps, has it all over her face, her front, the table, uses so many condiments (I'm talking tomato sauce, BBQ sauce, mustard, chilli sauce AND mayo ALL at once on the same food - and I am talking bucket loads of it, there are more sauces than food - it's like soup.

She pushes soft food (mash, pudding, ice cream) through her teeth, she talks with her mouth open.

PIGLET!

SS10 barely eats anything - we made brunch yesterday, bacon, scrambled and fried eggs, toast, grilled tomatoes, beans.

He ate bacon and toast. Fine. Only he ate LOADS of bacon. With his fingers. Despite his dad telling him repeatedly "ss don't eat with your hands, use your cutlery, blah blah blah" in one ear and out the other, and not a scrap of difference, because ALL OH will do is say it. Never enforce anything, no consequence for NOT doing it.

I really really wanted to grab his plate and put it on the floor next to the cat bowl, and tell him "if you want to eat like an animal you eat WITH the animals" But I know *I* would cop it from OH if I did that. And we made progress this weekend, he actually supported me and dealt with sd's manipulations and lies (well one instance) So Yay OH, and baby steps....

EWWW!! I know what you mean. My obese SD11 shovels it in so fast, her fork never rests. I wonder if she is chewing or swallowing the food whole. I have tried to watch to see if she is chewing, but it happens so fast, I can't tell. Like really, her fork is forever in motion!!! The only time it stops is when she is scooping herself out her 2nd or 3rd adult sized portions!! while Dh watches, but says nothing and then if the kids weight issue comes up, he blames it all on the BM because she keeps tons of little cakes, chips, and other junk in her cupboards. Very gross to watch.

Anything with noodles scares me to watch SD eat, her luscious lips made it look like she is making love to her food. She sucks them in as the broth runs down her chin and smacks the mushy food with a little broth that she hadn't ended up wearing agitating around her tongue sounding like a dog to a blind man. Oh the images will leave me with nightmares!!! :jawdrop:

I don't enjoy any meal with SS8 anymore. He spends the entire meal glaring at everyone.

i agree with most of the above! every instance of eating anything is gross w/ MSS13 and YSSstb10. thank goodness OSS15 actually has table manners.

oh the smacking and smacking and smacking. its almost as if they physically cannot keep their lips closed when they chew. and the ginormous bites. i mean EW. and the slurping, and sucking and dripping and wiping, and grossness all over their faces and hands and clothes. even with a damn napkin!

they both still have a hard time using utensils. wow. thats cuz everyone would cut their food up for them until recently (DH still does it from time to time, and he definitely gets the stink eye from me).

and the french fries. holy hell the damn french fries drive me absotively posilutely insane. they will eat one fry at a time. i mean, either fold it and eat it, or bite it in half then insert the other half. or if that's not enough, take a few fries at a time and bite off half. noooooo, they crunch all the way down the entire fry, one solitary fry at a time, as if they're woodchucks. each fry takes at LEAST 5 crunches.

and i have never in my life met anyone like these two, who produces eight gallons of spit with each bite, where you can hear it frothing and gushing and swooshing around inside their mouths.

:sick:

OK, rant over. i'm so glad they're good kids for the most part or the eating habits would probably induce a murder spree. i dont usually eat with them (neither DH nor Dumbass are 'family dinner' types, so whatev'.) and when we do go out to eat i hum in my head, look elsewhere, people watch at the restaurant, or intensely concentrate on my own meal/plate.

All of them because, at 10 years old, she still has not learned to close her mouth when she chews.

I don't "share" meals with my skids, or my DH. We eat from our own plates. I make one meal for dinner. If they don't like it, they don't eat it. They also don't get snacks/desserts for the rest of the night either, so I don't really have to argue with them.

Make the boundaries/rules and stick to them. DH/SO has to back you up. Once you present the united front and don't waiver in the rules/consequences, they'll stop.

On a side note, I'm probably just a germaphobe or something, but there's no way I'd share a community dip bowl with anyone. I use a spoon and dish out what I'll eat on my own plate/bowl. You don't need special "dip bowls" for that.

Maybe it's just me, but... veggies & dip? Is not dinner.

I agree with everyone, I would not be sharing a dip bowl with them but only because they don't get the concept.
I used to hate all meals wth the family. Once I began laying down the law things got a lot better. I was raised as a Southern Belle meaning always on my best behavior and the best manners. My SD's both think passing gas, belching, smacking, talking with your mouth open, not flushing the toilet, discussing what happens in the bathroom, scratching their privates in public, etc are all ok for ladies to do. They would do all of these things, other than not flushing the toilet, during dinner. At first I could only stare. Then I got to where I wouldn't eat. Then I began to lay down the law.
If I cook dinner then I make everyone's plate and even their seconds. I call the kids out when they are not using their manners. If they don't stop and act right then dinner is over for them. DH backs me up on this. Of course, now SD's are grown but I still make them use manners when they come over. SD22 moved back in with us and I am trying once again to help her be more of a lady and less of a brut. I love both my SD's but they get their naty habits from their nasty mother. I even have gone so far as to correct SD19 boyfriend. He passed gas during a family gathering in the den and I told him that is not ok in my house, he can go to the bathroom or outside if he feels the urge arise.
I have found a lot of kids are not taught at home how to behave while eating. A lot are not taught social skills. This isn't the fault of the SM, only the bio's are to blame, but SM's get the nasty looks in public when it happens.

I don't spend time with ss15 so nothing recent. Back in the day when I did I would actually have to say restaurant meals. At home our kitchen was set up that we had a breakfast bar and a small 4 person table. Each of the 4 kids had a designated seat at the breakfast bar and dh and I ate at the table. I didn't even have to look at ss.

BUT in restaurants-that wasn't possible. when entering a restaurant-ss would get very squirrely he would attach himself to dh's hip. He was about 11 or so when he started this. Initially I thought it was just because he woved his daddy so much he wanted to ensure that he could sit by him-eventually I realized that it wasn't necessarily that he was concerned about sitting next to dh-his concern was that he did NOT have to sit by ME. One time it just ended up that the only available seat was by me. Tough luck buddy. We were at olive garden. They brought us two big bowls of salad. One placed in between ss and I and the other across the table by one of the other kids. Dh grabs the other bowl and starts dishing salad out for our youngest. I grab the bowl between ss and I and fill my salad bowl. SS waited until 4 people got salad out of the bowl by dh while this almost full bowl sits right in front of him. He did not want to take salad from the same bowl as me. Dh called him on this behavior and actually refused to let him get salad out of his bowl!! It really just kills the atmosphere when someone whom you are assisting in paying for their meal treats YOU as if you have some sort of disease. I can assure you I'm a very clean person, I don't smell badly, nor do I "bother" ss-it wasn't as if I'd ride his ass or yell at him or be adverse to him in anyway-so for him to act like that was utterly ridiculous especially since I had been in his life since age 1.

I do believe that was one of the last meals that I ate with him.

Also it got to the point in which I kept my food elsewhere in the home and would not only not eat WITH ss but would not eat anything that he touched. I am pretty certain he had pinworms, but then he would adamantly deny it to dh so they were just left untreated. I also eventually kept a stash of plates, silverware and other such items in an out of the way cabinet for me and my kids to utilize.