[alt text: a 4-panel comic by @introvertdoodles, which is titled “Not ‘Appropriate’”. The first panel depicts a child wearing a very creative and unique outfit, and their parent is pointing at them and saying, “You can’t wear that to church.” The child is replying, “Why? All my bits are covered.” In the second panel, the same child and a grandparent are eating dinner at a dining room table, and the grandparent is saying, “You aren’t excused until you eat everything on your plate.” The child is replying, “Why? I’m full.” In the third panel, the same child is holding a stuff animal, and a different parent is telling them, “You’re too old to be carrying that toy around.” The child is replying, “Why? The tag just says ‘ages 3 plus.’” In the fourth and final panel, the same child is sitting across from a school principal in the principal’s office. The principal is saying, “You can’t argue with the teacher.” The child is replying, “Why? He was wrong.”]
As a former kid, I can say sometimes kids lie and say they’re full because they’re well aware there’s cookies or ice cream elsewhere in the house.
so make a rule that leaving dinner unfinished means you must be too full for dessert? doesn’t seem that hard to me.
If anything, being very strict about food intake usually leads to unhealthy eating behavior, at least according to every person I know who has issues with food in either direction. Including myself.
I’d say the odds of kids doing that are pretty slim, they usually aren’t that strategic when it comes to food. But even if it were the case, it’s still no reason to control kids’ food intake during mealtime. That’s just abusive and is going to give them issues with food.
Kids are generally actually quite good at regulating their food intake naturally in ways that parents often don’t understand. Adults tend to think in terms of roughly balanced meals for every meal, but kids often tend to favor one particular food at a time, achieving balance of nutrition over the course of the week. Especially when they’re younger, it’s often very chaotic what kids want to eat at a given time. They might love something one day and hate it the next. Their taste and palate are still developing, and it’s a parent’s job to be flexible rather than a child’s job to follow arbitrary food rules.