toddler mealtimes

[Caribbeanqueen]

Dd is 14 months and a good eater most of the time, but has recently started whining and whingeing when in her high chair. Basically she wants a toy or a book to play with or to bang my cutlery and plate around instead or some kind of entertainment. If she doesn't get what she wants she refuses to open her mouth and eat.

Do I give in and let her play through her meals or do I persevere in wanting her to eat without playing? Thanks for any advice.

Does she feed herself at all? I do a combo thing with dd --- say, give her some finger foods like banana whilst I feed her cereal and milk. I also started letting her feed herself pasta bits. Letting her feed herself some has helped a lot!

my dd (19mths)needs every distraction going - at the moment its a polystyrene thing with golf tees which she pushes in and out while i get the spoon in and out. my friends dd needs the same level of distraction at dinner time.

maomao, she does feed herself a little bit but not much ends up in her mouth, she usually plays with it.

She will point at specific things she can see and unless she gets exactly that, she won't co-operate.

Hmmmmmm, my DD went through a short period of this sort of behaviour. She is 21 months old now and has been clear, iyswim, for about 6 months. I just used to give her a book to play with whilst I was prepping the food and then we would sit down together and eat it without the book etc. I have no idea whether than was the textbook thing to do or even if it would work for your DD, but it certainly did the trick for us.

Hmmm.... But does the playing with some of her food help her get the rest down (assuming that it is indeed what she wants to eat!)? Mine is pretty specific about what she wants too, so I'm glad that we started signing with her.

Ds is 15 months and he does exactly the same thing; I give in and give him whatever he's pointing at most of the time (unless it's a sharp knife!) He only wants the distraction while being spoon fed, about halfway through I let him try feeding himself. He doesn't want toys when eating finger food. I figure there's plenty of time when they're older to start teaching real manners...

We did an awful thing with dd when she was still on mush food which we had to feed her: we stuck a video on and spooned it in while she watched t.v. It wasn't something we ever wanted to do but we couldn't get her to eat in any other way and she was losing weight pretty rapidly. Now she's mostly feeding herself (19 months) that provides some new entertainment for her and she's also more interested to see what I'm eating / doing and to have a 'conversation' with me. So basically I'm trying to say that some of the early distractions techniques needn't necessarily lead to bad habits long term.