What do you do when food is thrown from the high chair?

[WestYorkshireGirl]

My 14mo DD has just decided after eating pretty much everything that she doesn't seem to like much apart from mashed potato! Things she previously loved are flung down without a second thought. Tonight she had 2 roast potatoes and a yoghurt for tea. What do you do when they don't eat the things you give them - do you do something else or let them go without? As DD is my first I have no idea when you need to start mild discipline e.g. saying 'no' when she does this or throws her cup etc on the floor or take things away when she messes about. Thanks!

funnily enought my 14 mo DS is exactly the same at the mo. We have two dogs so at least that takes care of the mess on the floor. Can't say the same for the poor walls though. My ds has three meals a day that he gets to eat by himself, and i would hazard a guess that 2/3rd of these end up on the floor. Once he has had his lunch I give him milk with nestle cerelac or some milky reddy brek in a bottle so its like a meal and he usually drinks all of this. He also gets a bottle of this first thing in the morning, about an hour before breakfast and last thing at night, which is about 3 hours after tea so i know he is getting some nutrition in him. He gets plenty juice and water with his meals and inbetween as well out of baby cups so im not bothered he is still drinking from a bottle. Ds is in the 98 percentile consistently since birth so he certainly not shrinking away anyway!

Pick it up & try again

My 24mth old is still throwing....eats well but then chucks chucks chucks. Try to stop it early !!!

I vaguely remember ds losing his appetite at that age and got bored.

So in the end I ate every meal with him, ignored the throwing and only gave small portions. He'd nick my food so I knew he was getting stuff in him and gave snacks in between. We also made meal times short and sweet to save the stress.

He's now 2.5 and eats well and is happy (usually) to sit up at the table. He doesn't deliberately drop food and feeds himself very well so something worked.

Send in the dog to clear up . DS2 started this around 14 months, I tended to ignore and he has now stopped aged 18 months so everyone is happy except the dog

Your DD is conducting an empirical study on the law of gravity: she is checking that, time and time again, if she throws something, it will hit the floor. This is normal, and desirable (up to a point!): I wouldn't discipline for that.

The eating habits, on the other hand, may need to be tackled if you don't want to end up with a fussy eater. Maybe try giving her different foods so she cannot resort to her 'favourites' at every meal? I don't think you can do much discipline at that age, but you can offer different foods, give lots of praise and make mealtimes fun to encourage her to try new flavours and textures.

My DD does this although she's a bit younger (11 months). Part of it is attention as I find when I give her food and then get on with eating my own she does it a few times, waits for a reaction and when she doesn't get one she then starts eating. But when she's been very fussy (eg. after a bad bout of tonsilitus) we did food playtimes where I got loads of different foods ready not at a meal time and we squished it, tasted it, mashed it together etc so that she learnt food isn't just a chore. Now when she recognises a food she is happy to play with it for a bit and then eat it. varying the way I give her food helps aswell - not always mashed pot etc and making the meal multi textured and coloured.