Sitting down to eat nightmare!

[izziash]

HOW do i get my 16 month old son to sit in his highchair or at the table without either wandering off or flapping around like a just caught fish? AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

Would love to know answer to this one as my 2yr old has started wandering off half way through dinner. She has also just started throwing her food around the kitchen. Has always been good until last few weeks. Not made any easier by DD1 laughing at her though!

i strap my 24 month old into the highchair

if he really isnt sitting nicely (whilst trying to encourage him to be sit nicely ,and distractug him from flapping around as much as possible) after several warnings his food is removed from the tray and the highchiar is turned aroudn 180degrees and moved away from the table and he is ignored for a few minutes

Then normally eh comes back and eats nicely.

If he wants any pudding (ie fresh fruit) then he needs to eat all / most of his first course.

If he keeps messing around i assume he isnt that hungry (or else he would eat his food) and he gets down and has NOTHING at all except water until next meal time.

When he is very hungry he can eat an almost adult sized meal in a few minutes, when faffing about he can eat less than 1/4 of 1 sandwhich in 20 mins

its just a phase!

noth mummy and daddy and I have agreed that until he consistently sits nicely most of the time he cant move into the booster chair and eat at the table,

mine were strapped in up to 18 mts ish.i honestly think the only thing you can do is talk talk talkm to them - i find that when ever dh and i start talking about something over their heads then they (2 x 2yr old and 5 yr old) wander off and mess about - whereas 'the what did you do today' keeps us going up to pudding and then they don't need help to stay put!

Strap into highchair / booster seat. Don't worry about playing with food though, its good for them (just messy).

DD2 can undo harness straps, so don't think that will work. If I turn her away from the table (which I do) she thinks its fantastic -doesn't have to eat her tea! She has a stokke chair so threat of not moving into booster seat won't work. To be honest I think I accepted along time ago that she is just one of those difficult (but highly entertaining and ingenious) children

My DD starts chucking food when she's eaten enough and TBH I just get her down so we can finish our meal.

2 yr olds find prolonged meals boring I guess.

When DD stopped being strapped in (aged 18 months) the first time she started to climb down down I would ask 'Have you finished your meal?'. If she wanted to get back up to eat some more, she could. But just the once.
If she carried on getting down and went to play, that would be it. No more food until the next meal or snack time.

Occasionally she would wander back into the kitchen while the rest of the family was tucking into dessert and ask for some but we always said 'No, you got down from the table'. So we had a couple of tantrums. Most times she wouldn't even ask because when she got bored being at the table, she'd had enough to eat.

She soon got the hang of staying on her chair although still stands up in the middle of the meal for no reason.

if they get out of straps use reins and do them uo behind their backs

where there is a will there is a way... unless you actually dont mind that she gets down

one of my nanny friends (looks after slightly older children who used to always get down in the middle of eating)... after loads of warnings every meal for months she told them if you get down i will assume you have finished, your food will go in the bin and you will wait til next meal... they very soon stopped getting down when they realised she was seriouse!

Many thanks for all the tips, I shall be trying everything this weekend! :-)

Strap him in.