20 month highchair battles

[Thinkmummy]

We've recently had trouble getting our little girl to have meals in her highchair. As soon as we go to put her in it she gets hysterical so then is not interested in her food. We've tried giving her her favourite meals, waiting a little later to make sure she's hungry but no she screams her head off.

So I,ve resorted to her sitting on my lap on the sofa then she'll scoff the lot. We,ve tried sitting her at the breakfast bar where we eat our meals but that has the same effect

help! Any suggestions.

P.s we don't have space for a proper family table for her to sit at

My 22mth ds does this when he's teething - he then goes back to highchair after he has the teeth. No idea why, maybe eating hurts and this it's associated with highchair?

Have you got room for a tiny table and stool, child-sized, where she can have her meals? We have a little plastic fold-up table we use for drawing and that but DD sometimes eats at that. I'll have a look and see if I can find one online, it was very cheap.

It might be that she doesn't like the highchair at all, as that's about the age a lot of kids will move to a booster seat at the table. If you don't have room for a family table then it might just be time to start thinking about the longer-term solutions for where she eats.

Kind of like this so it folds away at the end of the day if you're lacking a lot of space. Ours was cheaper than this though, so if you hunt around there will be something.

We have the same issue with our 22 month old dd2 for a few months. I can remember going through this with dd1 at a similar age, we alternated with letting her eat in front of the tv and sitting her at her own little table (from ikea). No idea how we got her back to eating at the table but she was back there by 2.5, so I'm going with the flow with dd2 for now.

I really would ditch the highchair, dd2 is out of hers 6 months or so now. I wouldn't be happy having a toddler sit at a breakfast bar though so you really need to think about what changes you could make so you can have a small family table.

Thanks for the ideas, you're all right about thinking about long term I'm trying to convince my oh to remove the breakfast bar and put a small table in its place. Realisically money is tight and will prob be 6-12 months before we can afford to do this ( redecorating at the same time to cover up where the counter top has been removed. I suppose we could look at investing at a small plastic table but she would be eating at a different level to us in the short term. What do you do when eating out though?

I have this, I put her dolly in the chair, bib on dolly, start feeding her the food. Dd quickly wants to be there instead. She then likes dolly nearby to share her dinner with her

We don't eat out these days I'm afraid! We found 18 mths to 2.5 years to be too much work with dd1 eating out together so we gave up til she was older and could be entertained long enough with colouring/books etc. It just wasn't with the hassle trying to keep her still.

We're in that phase now with dd2 and eating out as a family is off the cards for another 8 or 9 months realistically. It's not that long in the great scheme of things and we find life is less stressful this way!

ps you really should look into a temporary family table solution until you redecorate, you won't get away with the highchair for another 6 months (imo).

I think she might have outgrow her high chair. I think mine did around 2 as well. Can't remember now but we got her an ikea junior chair so she can feel all grown up. But we eat at the dining table so she just wants to be part of the grown ups. Maybe your 20mo is copying you too? I assume you all eat on the sofa? I'm afraid that's probably something you will have to let her do soon if that's what everyone else is doing.