Well, I am fortunate in that mostly I am available and don't absolutely *have to* get out of the house on time so in this situation I would sit with DS as long as needed until he could return to his meal but when you have another child to get out to school or need to get to work etc etc then obviously there is only so much time you can allocate.
There's a fine balance in giving choices IMO because LOs do tend to get so little choice over their lives and if we give them choices where possible they can prove to be more cooperative when we need them to be, but as I said before too much choice and they can feel lost like they need someone to show them the way...and for every child at every age and stage the balance is going to be different.
On the whole I find being sympathetic to their frustrations and upsets (caused by tiredness hunger or whatever) gets over the problem much faster, although the aim should really be on listening to their complaint rather than speeding up the tantrum iyswim.
I think I would talk to him when it is not meal time (out of the moment before any problem arises) and tell him you've noticed that he is frequently upset at meal times and you'd like to help make meals happier , that you feel he has too many choices and that this is causing him some upset so from now on you'll help him by making some of those choices for him. I personally wouldn't put up with moving places every meal time but it's a personal family thing and you need to decide which aspects of the routine you are not happy with and change those, pick your battles. On some things I try to accommodate DS when he changes his mind because adults also change their minds on things, but it needs to be reasonable and not lead to another change and another change iyswim. so there is no fixed rule on what things you should or shouldn't give choice over but for instance you could do one of these:
- out of the moment ask him where he prefers to sit, tell him this is his opportunity to choose, now, and not at meal time, tell him after this choice you will not accommodate any more changes for a week/month (so he can choose once per week and that's it, not every meal, once his choice is made for that week say 'are you sure? this is the time to change your mind, you can only change your mind now and not later' then that's it, the rest of the week you 'hear him that he wants to move and he will have a chance to change his seat at the end of the week and not before'
or
- before the meal tell him to choose his seat. Then just before bringing the food out tell him now is his last chance to change his mind and once the food is at the table and other diners have sat down it is too late and no changes will be made. This example allows a lot more control for him but might also lead to more stress for him if he is finding decision making stressful.
If he has a tantrum and doesn't eat a meal I'd just let him go without for a meal or two - and it's ok to sympathise with him being hungry too. If you can get a word in during the tantrum as well as hearing him you could also tell him, we will run out of time for this meal, I don't want you to be hungry but we have to finish at x oclock because we have to get to school, there isn't another meal until snack at such oclock (whatever the normal routine is).
I can also remember a short phase of my DS wanting lots of choice and not being mature enough to handle it. Worth mentioning too that he's at the half year development leap stage so a lot of things can go 'off' for a while then come back on track.
it's worth giving him some food to pick at as soon as you cna too like MJ&N said. There's no way I'd allow mine to go so far as regularly walking around the house nibbling on titbits and not having his main meal but I've often given little bits before the meal knowing if I didn't he'd go past his ability to hang on to his mood and would fail the entire meal.
