I would also recommend 2 books, both by the same author Ellyn Satter. They are:
1) Child of Mine. Feeding with love and good sense
2) How to get your kids to eat....but not too much
Her premise is it is *your* job to offer healthy meals and snacks thru out the day and the *childs* job to decide what (if any!) to eat. As long as a child is offered healthy meals with at least one or 2 things you know they like they will not starve. Foods jags (like eating only pasta with butter) will eventually end and will have no long term nutritional impact. While it would be great if every child ate well rounded meals with plenty of fruits and veggies every day the bottom line is that doesn't happen with all kids. If your kid is one who doesn't give them a multi vitamin and don't sweat the small stuff!!
One last note. Don't focus on waht they each each meal, focus on what they eat over a week. You just might find that it isn't as bad as you think!

It might be good to look at what the child is eating and drinking in the hour or two before meals. I've noticed that even if I give my kids a small snack to "tide them over" until dinner or a cup of juice or milk too close to a meal, they eat significantly less.

My daughter just turned three and also sits at the table and does everything BUT eat. She climbs around on the chair, talks, and sings, even though she likes the food I've given her and she should be hungry. She attends a feeding therapy class for a sensory-based texture issue. The speech-language patholgist who treats her recommended asking my daughter's pediatrician for an antihistamine whose side effect is increased appetite. We'll see if the restlessness at the table is just a phase before we try it.

I'm in the same position with Kristen here. My kids are 10 & 3 and even the 10 yrs old would drag out diner time though I served her favorites food. We've tried set diner time to end 15 minutes after my husband and I are finished but that still didn't work. We've tried to finished diner so we can do something fun together, or watch their favorite shows, we even tried let them finish their own (drags on hours!!!). I have a feeling that they will starve if they didn't eat and they'll snacks or they won't have a good night sleep. I'm helpless..... I'd love to have sometime with each of them before start cooking but we didn't get home till at least 6 everyday. how do you find time with your children and cook and have diner before bed time not to mention tons of homeworks on my 5th grader.

I am a teacher of special needs preschoolers and have used this method to get children to learn how to sit at a table, as well as introduce new foods. We keep a small portion of a favorite or preferred food item visible on the table. The preferred food is cut or broken up into very very small pieces. Every time the child takes a bite of their lunch, they get a small piece of the preferred food as reinforcement. We remind them, " You need to take a bite of pasta, before you get a chip". Then when they do take a bite, you immediately give them the small piece of the preferred food item, with specific phrase to the task, " What a nice job taking a bite !"of your pasta!

I have hard time seeing the benefit of bribing a child to eat. Nor do I see the benefit if assigning more value of one food over another. Doing so just reinforces that some foods are "better/special/etc". All foods are ok on moderation but in the example above chips are being presented as better than pasta.

To the busy mom of 2 I hear you!! My son's bed time is 7:30 and we don't get home until 5:30 or 6:00. What I have starting doing is batch cooking every other weekend to stock my freezer with healthy nutritious meals that can be reheated pretty quickly. Add a veggie and we are good to go in about 15 minutes. I also roast a chicken most Sundays. Great for dinner that night and the leftovers are good for sandwiches, wraps, even tacos