As you are making the plates pre-served, you might try not putting the plates on table until everyone is seated. She's hungry quickly after gobbling her food because she is eating way to fast. She sounds like a compulsive eater also. Eating and eating and eating because it taste good not so much actually hungry.

I could not sit at a table with a kid who eats meal in the manner you described that spaghetti display. She licked her plate and fingers :jawdrop: how does Dad either not notice or not care?

I agree with banning her from the family dining table. You have a four year taking notes and being influenced sitting there. How do you go about teaching DD with Miss Piggy the Slob demonstrating her ridiculous performance?

That's probably the best way to approach Dad about the situation. Your daughter is going to learn this meal mannerisms.

Have you tried making her count to 60 between mouthfuls? It works quite well as well as insisting on proper posture during a meal. Dad is the problem here if he finds this acceptable.

She's comfort eating . She has emotional issues .

Binge eating is generally an emotional response, if shes emotionally eating then shes got an unhealthy relationship with food and may well find herself with further issues later down the line. Binge eating may well develop to bulimia when she later feels the guilt for having eaten so much.

There are a few things you can do but the biggest support needs to be coming from your husband, if he cannot recognise the issue then its like flogging a dead horse.

Same for the table manners, if he cant see it then you are fighting a loosing battle because the way to change it is to be on top of her at every meal.
Do not put the plates on the table until everyone is there, if she finishes before everyone else then she needs to stay sitting there and for goodness sake licking her plate? No, not cute, not funny, just icky.

This sounds a little like how my husband was when I met him. Well, he of course was an adult so there was no plate and finger licking. But he ate like a starved dog that was afraid someone was about to take his food away. He would literally be done his salad and full meal before I was half way through my salad. And I'm not an abnormally slow eater.

We talked about it, because it was becoming a problem when we were dating. I often felt he was trying to rush through dinner, and I felt awkward sitting there eating alone with him already done. I had to ask him many times to slow down and pace himself so I could be more comfortable.

He reflected on this, and realized that when he was growing up, he and his 2 younger brothers often felt they had to "compete" to get enough food. If you didn't eat fast enough to get seconds, then the food would be gone and there wouldn't be enough. My DH's Mother is a diabetic and has always been overly focused on what and how much everyone was eating- often with a judgmental frown on her face. But these kids were super active athletes and growing boys who COULD eat a horse and not get "fat".

It doesn't sound like that is the case with your SD, as by her age, height, and weight she sounds a little overweight. I don't really have any advice, other than to consider if there has ever been a time when she felt like there wasn't "enough".

If not, I agree with HappilySelfish- it sounds like comfort eating to soothe herself.

We hae 4 kids and if we'd let them behave like that, nobody would get seconds except one kid. So our rule is "no seconds until everyone finishes their first."--including grownups. That has really helped with the table manners when we have guests.

You could also just cook enough to have no seconds.

I don't understand parents who don't teach their children proper table manners. It's so basic.

My SD7 has terrible manners as well, but it's not that she eats too much. She whines and cries and complains about having to eat supper and about how BM lets her eat whatever she wants. When she finally starts eating, she picks everything apart, she uses her hands, she licks her fingers, etc. I would have never gotten away with that kind of behaviour as a child, but my husband doesn't notice or do anything about it unless I point it out. It's especially embarrassing when we go to someone else's house for a meal.

Does your SD act this way when you go to restaurants and other people's houses as well?

Is it possible she has sensory processing issues?

I would buy that the lack of food at BM's and the "races" at mealtimes there trained her to be this way. However, unless I have this wrong, she has now lived with your for a year? She is 9 years old. Unless there are developmental, cognitive, or sensory issues going on she should be picking up on this stuff by now.

SD5 was like that. At 4 years old she would stuff herself with 3 good sized portions of dinner and tell us her tummy hurt and she couldn't eat anymore. I would say I'll bet it does, you ate three portions. She would get up and sit on the couch or something and 20 minutes later would be coming up to us saying her stomach doesn't hurt anymore and ask for more food. We finally had to start cutting her off.

At her well child visit last year the pediatrician said her BMI was in about the 69th percentile and the year before it was like 89th percentile. She wasn't fat but she was built really solidly and kind of stocky. Now, part of it is just her build but I told DH before that I thought we were over feeding her and it turns out I was right. I firmly believe she just couldn't tell when she was not hungry any more unless she was stuffed so full it hurt. At school this year I have to send in a lunch and two snacks a day. I would send in, for example, a PB&J sandwich and a side like carrot sticks for lunch, and two other snacks. The first few weeks of school she was coming home about half the time with her sandwich uneaten and her teacher said something to us about her not having an afternoon snack. Turned out she was stuffing herself with all the snacks, and half the time the sandwich too, in the morning and so had nothing left for the afternoon snack and I had to start labeling her food to tell her when to eat it. Otherwise she would stuff herself and run out.

I wouldn't eat a the same table with her, tell your DH he has made the choice by not addressing the situation.