Food Tossing

I have no idea if my experience will help yours or not, but YES my daughter was a food tosser, hider, etc. She is 18 months and it IS a lot better. I did a few things, I have no idea what was most effective...

When the tossing starts, I would calmly say "no" or "we don't throw our food", or something. (They understand more that we tend to give them credit for, and even if they don't understand right away they will get the hang of it eventually if you do it). If it continues, I would either take the food out of her hand myself and/or turn my back to her for 15-30 seconds. The turning the back thing is sort of like a timeout, and I read that at that age it is a good way to discourage behavior that you don't like. And, I also only gave a little food at a time. She tended to get distracted by too much food on her tray and then just started playing with it.

If it continues more, you might consider taking her down from the chair and ending meal time. I found that very difficult to do, as tossing happened pretty early in the meal and I was always worried she hadn't eaten enough yet. BUT, that said, every book under the sun tells you to take them out of the chair and end the meal.

Good luck. It WILL end, this is just another FUN phase they go through!!! :-) (Oh, and, my favorite part of it was when I was down on the ground cleaning things up, getting a piece of food thrown on me! Now THAT is a degrading feeling!!!)

P.S. If you don't have a dog, a dustbuster can be a very helpful tool during this phase!

This is definitely just a stage. When my twins were that age we had more food on the floor than in their mouths. :-) We got some Neat Sheets to put underneath them. THis trapped most of the food and I could just pick it up and easily toss the food in the garbage. The best part about Neat Sheets is that you can just throw them in the washing machine to clean. Have fun watching your child learn new things. IT doesn't last very long.

Get a big plastic table cloth and spread it around under chair. Then let her feed her self.

This is just a stage. If she drops something let it stay there.

This is the "uh oh" stage. Fun, but UH OH!

She understands. Kids can communicate with sign language by 7 months. She definitely will understand.
She also understands that she can get a reaction from mommy if she throws stuff on the floor. :)

Hi M.,

I am sure you know this already, but this IS a stage and it will pass. Best advice either calmly advise the child not to throw it, or what we did was we started very early having our child help us pick up the food. By 7 months she was saying her first words, and new that it was just something new (throwing food) that she hadn't done. You can make clean up a game, and it becomes happy instead of frustrated parent and iritated kid. It worked for us, as my daughter loves to clean up now. :) Plus now that she is almost 3, can do it all by hersdelf. :) The clean up will come in handy with other siblings and friends.

Blessings,

K.S.

Totally totally normal. It's part of the experimentation process that all babies go through. I have not met a parent yet that hasn't experienced it. Try to softly discourage the behavior (we had a hard time not laughing), and put your baby in a place that is easy for you to pick up. It will eventually end. I believe Jean Piaget (pioneered cognitive theory for infant/child development) called them "little scientists." They are just trying to find out what the world is all about. Take care.