12 mo, bls throwing food on floor

[@llli*elizabethr]

Hi all, sorry for the long post!

Just looking for more advice about bls and maybe some attachment parenting advice if anyone has some.

Our 12 mo has always thrown her food off the table/tray when she doesn't want something. At first it was a clear signal that she was done or didn't want it and I was fine with it. However, she is getting better at eating. We try to do three meals a day together while we are on vacation and she is getting at least two but usually three or four options at each meal.

Also, she is one of those kids who doesn't really like more than one kind of food on her tray at a time, which makes giving her choices harder you know? So if I put a different choice on her tray while she is eating something, she will either throw the one that she has in her hand on the floor to explore the new one, or throw the new one on the floor. However, if I wait till she is done with choice 1, she will gladly eat choice 2 also.

She is finally has started picking up on sign language. We have been working on it for months now, and she has just started to sign "more", which to her right now I think actually means "want", because she walks up to me and signs more when she really wants to nurse. But uses the same sign when she wants more food on her tray (see above about multiple things on her tray).

Anyway, I'm just wondering how/when to teach her not to throw her food on the ground if she doesn't want it. We have been trying to guide her hand to the table if she looks like she is about to drop it. But she will also drop things on the ground and than sign more. DH I think gets more frustrated with it than I do so I want some strategies that will work for all of us. He tends to tell her in a firm voice no, and then she starts to cry, where as I just kind of ignore it and think she will grow out of it. I'm not sure what the best strategy is and I don't want to just hope she learns it on her own you know?

Any advice on the food dropping and also how to give her options without it all ending up on the floor? Thanks so much guys!

[@llli*djs.mom]

Put a shower curtain or garbage bag under her high chair and don't worry about it. Food throwing at 12months=normal. If you want to teach her not to do it, you take all the food away and shut it down. But she seems young for that.

[@llli*elizabethr]

Great, that is kind of what I was thinking but when is a developmentally appropriate time to teach her otherwise? Or when should it stop on its own?

[@llli*djs.mom]

When you think doing it won't make food a bad experience for her but that she can grasp what is happening and learn to say "all done." It's different for different kinds. My son didn't have any real language until after he turned two. Girls are sometimes literate way before then.

[@llli*mommal]

with Djs.mom. Negative strategies like your DH is using rarely work on young babies- they tend to be upsetting and frightening rather than effective. So focus on redirecting her. If you see her about to drop something, try saying "Give it to mama" or "Put it in the bowl" or something positive. Something that can be praised with a "Good job! You gave it to mama/put it in the bowl!" If she follows your redirect successfully. Maybe if you got her some sort of fun animal-shaped receptacle, that would help?

Some food-hurling or dropping is totally normal at this age, and a drop-cloth is really the best way to deal with it. Besides, you're probably going to be using the drop-cloth for YEARS, because kids are still really messy at age 2, or 3, or 4...

[@llli*zaynethepain]

I thought ds would never stop bc he finds it so rewarding to feed the dog But he's really scaled back in the last month or so, he fork feeds her instead. He also would throw anything extra on the floor so you're not alone there. I can't give you a specific time frame since all kids are different but rest assured it's all normal behavior. Kudos on signing! It's really awsome when it finally clicks in their head.

[@llli*sassypants]

My son didn't stop throwing food on the floor until he was 2yo. We had a table cloth under his chair so the food dropping was only a real annoyance when he would throw it all on the floor then throw a tantrum because he wanted more and we weren't getting it fast enough. Even worse was when he would get something saucey on his fingers then decide it needed to come off, and whipping his hands up and down to fling it off was the only reasonable solution.

We did all the usual things, like saying "no", taking food away, trying to reason, diverting attention, etc. In the end, whether or not any of them worked was completely dependent on DS's mood at the time and I am convinced that none of them helped in the long run. Taking away his food ended up being more for my sanity than a teaching tool, as I would rather put up with some screaming than cleaning pasta sauce droplets off the ceiling.

[@llli*filmmommy]

We've been trying everything -- but we end up with some food throwing every day. I feel your pain. We have gotten frustrated and yelled at her on occasion, but that's mostly when she's in a restaurant and throws food. We once had food hit a woman and stain her clothes (oh, yes -- very embarrassing) before we could even realize she was about to throw it. It's tough, because sometimes it's because she doesn't want the food we've given her, sometimes it's when she's done, and sometimes it's for no reason we can figure, so we can't come up with a good method of preventing it. She'll be really good one day at handing the food to me, and the next actually dodges my hand or the bowl because she wants to throw it. I keep saying it's really only one of my daughter's unfortunately habits -- she's an angel otherwise!

[@llli*djs.mom]

I feel like this is like sleep. It's not something that can be controlled at this age but it's certainly not worth any more of your energy. Because eventually they all learn it's not OK to throw food. But not before 2 that's for sure. And I would NEVER take my kid out to eat when this was going on! OMG it's bad enough how hard it was for ME to have to clean up after my kid. Who I loved. I would never make some poor waiter at a restaurant deal with it. So yeah that meant I didn't take him out to eat for at least a year. And I think we all go through a period of really hating mealtime. For me it was because I was working so hard to buy and feed him organic and locally farmed food and I had a really really hard time with the waste. But they get it eventually. And being pissed about it didn't make the process go any faster. That's for sure.

[@llli*mommal]

And I would NEVER take my kid out to eat when this was going on! OMG it's bad enough how hard it was for ME to have to clean up after my kid. Who I loved. I would never make some poor waiter at a restaurant deal with it.

My kids were never big throwers, but they were still super-messy. We transformed into the most generous tippers in town when we took our 1 year-olds out and they made messes on the floor. And I was always down on my knees at the end of the meal, picking up their drips and drabs!