Two Year Old Stuffs Face

Hi M.,

My daughter who will be 2 next month, does the same thing. LOL She usually does swallow before she chokes. I gently encourage small bites. I can say that my first thought is it is a phase. I did a search online for 2 year old stuffing mouth at meals, and found an article that may be helpful. It is a child pushing the limits, asking for attention and just being 2. :) My advice would be to show patience with it, and the phase will pass quickly. :) Here is the article I found.

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/ChildBehavior/messages/3357...

Blessings,

Katherine

does her mom say she does this at home?

maybe give her a little at at a time?

give her one quarter of a sandwich.. and tell her when she is finished with it.. she can have another quarter... she should be able to eat finger food by herself.. cut the food in little pieces to reduced the chances of her choking on it.

see if her mom will bring a special fork and spoon for her to use - that might encourage her to slow down a bit.

if she is stuffing her face maybe she needs to have a snack more often if she is so hungry.

if she is almost choking... that may have something to do with the condition of her throat. Ask the mom if she will take her to the doctor.

my son and daughter both did this and still do some times. We just say things like "that was a really big bite, you should take smaller ones" and praise them for the small bites they did take. Even when I cut small bites my daughter would put enough of them in her mouth to be too much. I agree with the other responders who say its just a phase and to leave it at that. Good Luck, Jen
p.s. Its really good to know CPR just in case LOL

Monkey see - Monkey doo....maybe actually sit down with her and have her mimic you eating. That's kinda what I am thinking. I don't know - my son doesn't do that. Hmmm - interesting. Good luck.

my daughtet did this, usually until she'd actually choke and puke on her plate. eventually we just fed her a bit at a time on her plate. she stopped finally, but i hear ya--it'snot only annoying but scary as well.

maybe you could try sitting with her and give her smaller portions on her plate, not enough to where she could stuff her face with,then slowly work up to bigger portions.If she stuffs her mouth again,with the bigger portions go back to smaller portions and try again.Hopefully she grows out of it soon.

I would just give her a little bit at a time - like 3-4 normal bites and make her swallow it before she gets more. If she just sits there and refuses to swallow then so be it - she is the one losing play time... Oh and don't act like it bothers you - she may be doing it for attention. Does she do it at home?

Is she at the appropriate level for speech development? Stuffing food in their mouth is one of the symptoms that goes along with a certain kind of speech development delay. They stuff because their nerves are not able to tell them when their mouth is full and/or it takes a full mouth for them to feel the food.

My grandson who has speech apraxia did that. He had a very small vocabulary at 2 and he was and still is, at 4, unable to make certain sounds because his nerves and muscles are not developed to do so.

What I did with him when feeding him is to put just one mouthful on his plate at a time. When he swallowed that I added another one. All the time eating myself and helping his older sister stay focused on staying at the table and eating.

Sometimes, I fed the children before or after I had already eaten. Sometime I fed the children at different times. I still sometimes hand feed each child because they eat better when I do. I also think they associate hand feeding with the love they received as a baby when they had to be hand fed.

And then there's the sibling rivalry thing. In your case the other child has come into your daughter's space and she may see that as taking your attention away from her. If you hand feed one, siblings may want to do that too.

My son went through that for a period of time. The only thing that we did was remind him to chew, chew, chew so he didn't choke and told him to take small bites. It was odd because he went from eating fine to gaging several times per meal. It was a phase though and he's over it now.

Good Luck