What age do you stop giving your children plastic plates and cutlery?

[mumofoneAlonebutokay]

Random one from me

Dd is 6 now. She has her autism but I think that i could get her to start using plates and 'adult' cutlery

The plates and cutlery aren't expensive of course

Mine were probably 7&5 or 6&4 ish so probably the right age.
Also possible ASD / ADHD here and they haven’t broken anything yet.
We just got cheap ikea stuff for them.

It depends on where I am.

In the house I'll let ds (2.5) use ceramic bowls, glass cups and he has toddler sized metal cutlery but I always bring plastic when we go out to save pressure incase something breaks when it's not ours. Could you try her with it at home where there's less pressure until you feel more confident about it.

It isn't age related - it's "are they responsible enough to have china crockery yet related?"

Is she?

I can’t remember exact ages, but it was whenever I was confident they wouldn’t throw them on the floor so probably 3/4ish.
Saying that, my 14 year old smashed about 5 plates and bowls by accident recently all over my kitchen, accidents will happen at all ages!

About 3?

threw them out as they got scratched so down to last few bits
when they went to school , maybe bit after

My boy is 2 1/2 and we stopped with the plastic plates/bowls when he was about 2. I once ate something off his plate and noticed it tasted soapy like the dishwasher tablet. That was enough for me to chuck them all in the bin. He just uses a side plate as a plate now. He's been using metal cutlery since he was 1. He was using the doddl cutlery and at about 18 months moved him to a proper knife and fork but toddler sized

Okay thank you all, I will remove the plastic crockery from my online shop 😄

She doesn't throw the plates on the floor and I can get her to put stuff in the bin or in the kitchen when she's finished

Asda sell great plastic plates/bowls/cutlery in sets of 4, every spring/summer, if anyone is interested them though xx

I smiled at this as we are still the proud owners of an Elmo plate and a Flower Fairy plate....DD is 18 and DS 16!!

So they still get used sometimes!

Dunelm do some good child-size metal cutlery. It's a good step up from plastic, but not having to manoeuvre full size crockery.

Mine still get used sometimes - and mine are 17, 15 and 13! Once a week the DCs make dinner for the family, and they always get out the plastic plates and cups. I’ve kept them all for BBQs in the garden.

Around 10/12 months for plates, bowls and cutlery, and about 1.5 to 2 for drinks at the table although they still had plastic cups for drinks elsewhere.

I'm sorry but is no one able to think for themselves anymore? Must everything be put to an internet poll 😂

I just gradually replaced with more grown up stuff as the plastic stuff broke or got lost. Saying that, we still have a couple of plastic IKEA plates on the go that we use for cake. DS is 17! 😂😂

We never had plastic cutlery apart from baby weaning spoons for yoghurt and cereals, pointless to use for learning to cut meat in my opinion.
We had baby/toddler metal cuterly.

Plates - maybe 18 months. We used older cake plates as well.

I had an IKEA set of plates, bowls and cups for outside or when we had more children as guest and it was easier than to supervise them like a hawk.

I never gave mine plastic plates or cutlery. They had metal cutlery from the start (toddler size at first with plastic handles, and then child size fully metal ones from maybe age 3). We’ve always used proper plates (with child friendly designs on - Peter Rabbit etc).

Auadhd for both ds and dd. Both used proper plates and cutlery from age 2.

I just got such a surge of nostalgia reading this post. I forgot all about my son’s little plastic plates and bowls, aw I miss those days! He’a nearly 21 now. Anyway… as you were!

We tend to use metal plates, so we didn’t need to use plastic unless our kids were as strong as king kong to break them. We don’t really use cultery, so again no plastic there, but we do have some small sets that have thick grippy plastic hands but metal spoon end etc.

Twenty-six!

I don't have anyone i can ask 😄

But thank goodness for mn, I thought i was gonna be told I'm wrong and she should still use plastic cutlery 😅

It's going so fast! She's such a big girl now!

I wondered this as mine are 7 and 5; it’s more that if I give to one I need to give to the other so the younger one is making me keep going with them longer. Our crockery is expensive and was a wedding present so I’m wondering about buying some cheaper ones for them but not sure if that’s odd.

Why are you buying more plastic stuff though? Surely the old stuff is good enough?

Approx 3 here we switched, but like PPs depends on context. Holidays still used plastic as didn't want to break stuff in other people's houses. Now we still have the plastic stuff and use for garden eating.

Oh, we moved, so I threw everything away in stress

Not green i know but they were getting old anyway, plus we'd somehow lost a lot of it