Throwing food on the floor

[secretbargainhuntlover]

my DS has just turned 2, for months now he s been throwing food on the floor , its not that he doesnt like what he s eating , he s trying to feed our dog

i now lock the dog out of the room when we are eating but he s still doing it, he s now doing it if we are eating in a cafe or at other peoples houses , ive tried telling him no, ive said he cant have any dessert but neither have worked, he throws plates and cups across the room too

any advice on how to get him to stop please ?

Put a plastic table cloth under his chair, pop everything back on his high chair.

Cups and plates are available with suckers on the bottom .
Dont make a fuss when you retrieve stuff

He will grow out of it!

Spoon feed until the habit is broken?.... You hold the dish and control the contents that way.

He will just stop if you ignore it. My ds did it all the time he is 18 now and doesn't . I did nothing. We over think everything these days I used to wish there had been MN when ds was small but now I am glad it wasn't around as I would have felt so inadequate!

Tell him no the first time then get him down from the high chair if he does it again and don't let him back up to eat for a while. If you make eating with the family a privilege which is earned by good behaviour he will value it and then you can use withdrawing that privilege as a way to manage his mealtime behaviour.

Don't leave him hungry until the next meal. If you think he hasn't eaten enough get him back up 5 mins later to try again. If he throws the food on the floor again he gets down again. Keep repeating until he gets the message. Stick it out and make sure he gets bored before you do.

If you think he has eaten enough to stop him being hungry then clear his food away and don't let him get back up.

Don't make a fuss, say very little and ignore any tantrums.

He will soon learn that if he wants his food it mustn't be thrown on the floor.

I could have literally wrote this post myself! DS 18mo and has been doing the same for months and its SOOOOOOOOO frustrating! No advise but will be watching this thread

Agree with tim. DS did this a lot, also to feed the cat. As soon as he throws food I threaten him with an early nap as " you must be very tired if you're being so naughty". Then follow through if he does it again. I also do a lot of spoon feeding. DS is 25 months. Same approach with spitting food out. DS is mostly much better now.

thankyou for the replies

ill try spoon feeding him, i spent half an hour today trying to clean bean juice off my walls lol

I broadly agree with noddyholder. My ds did this for what seemed like ever. We threatened, stopped the meal, rewarded, ignored etc and he kept doing it, regardless of what we did. Then he stopped. He grew out of it. They all do. So grit your teeth and one day he will just stop.

yes it is a stage, yes it will pass, yes put down newspaper, no it's not naughty, no don't spoonfeed

if he likes throwing stuff he's prob got a learning schema going on have a read

Tell him NO, and that if he's throwing food then he's finished and he gets down from the table. End of story, no more food till next meal. One warning and then follow through. This has stopped DS doing it from 16 months - at 2 your DS is well capable of understanding when he's being naughty.