food throwing

Alright, it's too much of a game. My Matthew is now throwing more food off his highchair than getting it in his mouth. And I try to put little on his plate at a time. He just doesn't have the appetite like he used to.
And he insists on self-feeding. Starting up with the Nooos

So, I'm alright as long as he's eating at least something right? He'll eat when he's hungry.
I just keep on repeating. "Food is for your mouth. Not the floor."

How long does this phase last???

Ohhh, snacktraps. bah, load of crap. Matthew figured out how to keep them open & dump Cheerios all over the living room floor. Lovely carpet. Extra crunchy. Again, "Food is for your mouth. Not the floor."

 

Alright folks, there have been 18 views and I know it's not just me checking to see if anyone had any pearls of wisdom.
Just need some reassurance right now... Thanks!

 

My boys think it's incredibily funny to fling food off their tray and watch the dogs run/fight for it. So not funny. <_< Mine have been doing this f.o.r.e.v.e.r. ... beginning to think this is one of the loonnngggger phases. I have now got control of the dogs (lol, right.) and sometimes have to put them outside but the boys still fling food. I just give a stern NO and "don't do it again or mealtime is over" and if they do it again I take away their food and they have to wait for snack time or another meal. My boys usually start flinging the food at the end of their meal so that's when I think they've had enough to eat ... even though the amount of food they ate appears to have been an amount no human being can survive on but they do. So sorry I'm not much help ... just enjoying :headbang: the ride with you.

 

Sorry, but probably no help here. My lo's have been throwing food for awhile and they still throw it on occasion. What helped somewhat was the daycare "teaching" them to hand back the foods they do not want to eat, instead of throwing it on the floor. Now they throw a fit if we do not get to them fast enough to take back the food, once they have decided to hand something back. The views are probably from others (like me) hoping for help too.

 

We have a major food throwing problem here (especially with DS). We haven't found anything that has helped the problem. Sometimes I have to take away their trays and feed them everything by hand. Oftentimes the food throwing starts at the beginning of the meal. :-( I hope you find something that works!

 

Yeah, my guys have done this for a while. I can tell you it does get better, but it takes a while. Like PPs said, it gets really bad when they're coming to the end of the meal, when the dog is around, and when they see their brother doing it.

If it's a particularly bad day, we'll put the dog away so there's no temptation there. We also say "no throwing" and give them 3 chances, counting "1, 2, 3" for each chance, telling them that the food is going away if they get to 3. Then if they continue to throw food, we take the food away and the meal is done. We do 3 meals and 2 snacks per day at structured times, so I have no fear ending the meal early since they'll have another chance to eat within 2 hours.

 

I was wondering the same thing recently. They are 22 months and have been doing this for what seems like forever. They do understand that if they do not want that particular food or drink they can put it on the table (off of their booster) and that is fine. But I think it's a matter of them pushing my buttons so they do it anyway SOMETIMES, not all the time.
One thing I make them do is clean up their mess on the ground. My DD is pathetic with her bowl of cheerios, tries to eat it with her hands for fun etc, gets tons on the ground. She picks up every single one when she's done. Theoretically you'd think she'd stop throwing it on the ground then, but nope
Hopefully it's just another one of those phases that goes away and you don't notice it til the one day you're like "Hey, they haven't thrown food on the ground in a LONG time!".

 

Mine went through this stage and I can tell you it does get better with time. One of the things my DH and I did was institute 3 chances and then the meal was done. If they threw food on the floor and did it three times, meal time was over. What we started to notice was that the throwing was worse when they were almost done their meal anyway, so we began to teach them to hand their plates to Mommy/Daddy/Other Responsible Adult. The novelty does wear off but when they did it, DH and I did not give them much of a response other then informing them of their 3 chances.
Good luck! Hang in there Momma!

 

Thank you! 1-2-3...you're dinner is Ooover!

Ahhh, just another happy memory when we fast forward a few years.
thanks everyone for your posts.

 

No advice, just stopped in to say "right there with ya"! :headbang: I'm watching a fairly lage percentage of my grocery bill get thrown onto the floor at every meal. I've been waiting for this phase to finish for at least 3 months now....1,2,3 dinner's over hasn'treally sunk in with my girls. I don't think it helps that their Daddy thinks it is funny & laughs when they do it.... :gah: Fortunately he isn't home for meals too often.

I'm getting pretty sick of mopping the floor every night, but the nights that I don't bother I wake up to a small ant army on our kitchen floor... :angry:

 

OK… I don’t know if this helps you because I don’t know if your son is an OK weight, underweight, overweight, likes to eat, shows now interest in eating, etc. If he’s OK on nutrition and weight you may want to just assume he’s done eating and take food away from him when he throws it.



Our boys are on the chunky side, so we just figure when they start throwing food, they’re not hungry, so they’re done. If they act hungry later we give them a snack. (we give them snacks anyway, though).However, our boys LOVE food. Unless they’re not feeling well, or really, really, really don’t like what they’re eating. If they don’t like what they’re eating, I can tell because they eat it (and keep on eating it) but spit the bits they don’t like out before the throwing starts.



We just try to maintain sitting/eating in high-chairs at certain times to get them in the habit of meals. We used to have more of a problem with food throwing until we realized… ‘ya know… they’re NOT in any danger of starving to death, if they don’t want to eat, we’re not going to make them’. The one exception is if they spit stuff out of their mouth… before the throwing happens if they do this I offer them something else before giving up on the meal. Because ours are chunky I don’t really stress about how much they’ve eaten (but the amount is very, very rarely an issue over the course of a whole day) I only worry if they don’t get enough fluids.



When we 1st started a few times they cried a few times when we got them down and cleaned them up after they started throwing food. (when we did this, I offered a snack about 1/2 an hour later). Most of the time they don’t. They still throw occasionally, but not that often. Either they’ve learned it’ll get taken away if they do, or we learned that if they do it is a sign to us that they’re not hungry enough to want to eat over play.





Anyway, that’s what we’ve started doing, and it works for us most of the time. If your child likes to eat OK, and doesn’t have weight or nutrition deficiencies, you may want to try it, he’ll start eating instead of throwing when he gets hungry, and you won’t have the stress of picking up messes as much.

I wouldn’t recommend trying it for someone like my husband… he FORGETS to eat for days :0.

 

Now I'm half kidding when I say this but...meal times are so crazy around here...usually my twins (14 motnhs old) eat fine and then when they start getting full they start throwing the food. I usually take it as a sign they are done and then take them out of their high chairs...and put them down on the floor and they crawl around and eat everything up that they just threw on the floor. I know it's gross..but with 4 kids, the babies sometimes get to it before I have a chance to!!!!!

YIKES!!

Shannon