ultramarina, I can totally see where that is coming from. But I also think that small children are a lot harder to feed than slightly older ones and habits morph over time. How we get our kids to eat at 1yr is different to 2yrs, to 3yrs and to 10yrs old... We've never really done TV or books to eat (well ipad for the youngest at breakfast sometimes, not so much because she won't eat but so that she will stop talking and we can manage to sort the older two out). BUT our kids have been extremely hard to get to focus on eating, to keep at the table, etc as small children. Miss ADHD is (unsurprisingly) still very hard to keep at the table, but for her we've gone from "exciting stuff at the table to keep her there" as a toddler to "She'll only eat if there is NOTHING more interesting going on". The problem we face and thus the approach we use is quite different at 6 than at 2.
She doesn't eat at school, because there is nothing we can send to school that meets school rules, her dietry restrictions, is practical for school, and which is also tempting enough for her to eat while a) she's on meds so her appetite is suppressed and b) there is so much that is SO much more interesting than eating when her appetite is suppressed. At home, on meds, she will eat - if we feed her appealing enough food in a boring enough environment and an adult supervises to make sure she pays attention long enough to eat.
For us family meals where we all sit at the table and have a conversation are, and always have been, a priority, we work hard to make that work and to teach our kids that this is how you eat. BUT we've done all manner of things along the way that are far from this. We've had years at a time where I fed our eldest the 3-4 foods she would eat on her own and then ate with DH hours later. We pick our battles. Honestly I think a lot of that research is aimed at people who are NOT seeing eat while they watch tele as an evolution, a "What ever works to get us through this one moment" but as the status quo, plenty of adults, couples and families do not see eating at the dining table as a family as what they do every day. So I am not sure how helpful this research is to those parents who know where they would LIKE to be and also know what is (and is not) humanly possible with this particular kid right now.
