1 yo OBSESSED with food! Major tantrums! Help!

[CheeseCat85]

Hi, just wondering if anyone has had a similar thing around this age, and if so what you did!
DS has just turned 1 and has always been a good eater since we started weaning him at 6 months. He eats pretty much whatever we give him and isn't fussy at all. He eats fingers foods, aswell as off the spoon.
But recently, he has gotten very very strange about food in general! He's a demon! Once he's in his highchair and he knows that food is coming he screams to high heaven- it really is ridiculously loud and high pitched, and often there's also full on tears- it sounds like he's really hurt himself. Soon as I sit down with his food and he begins to eat he's fine. In a happy mood, laughing, clapping hands etc. But if I get up mid way through feeding him (thus taking his food with me, or leaving it there) the tantrum starts again. And then the same again once it's finished. Sometimes the tantrums can go on for 10 mins plus- tears, red face, absolutely FUMING that his food has all gone. If you try to distract him with a toy etc he throws it immediately in temper.
He also does the exact same when I, or DP (or anyone else tbf) is eating around him. He stands there begging like a dog, puppy dog eyes and all. And as soon as you don't give him any it all starts. I know I shouldn't give in to him and give him food when he's behaving like this but sometimes I do for a bit of peace! I obviously don't mind sharing my food with him (sometimes!) but I don't want to do it because he's demanding it.
I know he's obviously too young for any sort of reasoning, so proper discipline wouldn't work. But any tips? And does anyone else's 1 year old have tantrums already like this? I feel like the terrible twos have come a year early and very suddenly!
When he's not kicking off, he's a very happy, chatty, affectionate clever little boy.

I don't think that you are deliberately being mean, I totally get the context of nipping somewhere - the issue is he doesn't understand context. He doesn't know that you are only nipping to the kitchen for a few seconds. All he knows is that he is hungry and the food that was there has been taken away. The where or how long is a concept he can't possibly understand - to him it's been taken away - end of.

I know he doesn't understand context or what I'm doing, that's a given really. I was using the fact that he has a full on meltdown when I occasionally have to move less than a metre away from him for a second or two to grab something as just one of the several different examples to describe how he is with food in general. Telling me I'm being mean to my 1 year old is a strange way of wording your point.
snow white thanks. That's good to know your lo has relaxed a little as they have gotten older!

Don't knock it! As the mummy if a two year old extremely fussy eater it sounds amazing. We went on holiday last year and he lost 4lbs in a week by starving himself. He's still on 9 centile and always has been. He is just getting a tiny bit better now.

A child of this age has the instinct of hunger but none of the understanding that they are in a situation when food WILL arrive. They are responding to a very basic instinct that is about survival and is telling them that if the food does not arrive they will die.

He will grow out of this as he gradually cottons on to the fact that he will not starve and that you are bringing the means to his survival!

He sounds so much like my daughter. She adores food. We can't eat around her as she pesters incessantly for what we're having. At 20 months she's now very verbal so she can understand 'Mummy's making you dinner, ' 'Soon,' and 'I will get you (a satsuma, etc)' and this makes things simpler during her mealtimes. We still get tantrums sometimes, but not too often. Things will get a lot easier when your son's got more language. Also Ashe gets more competent feeding himself, so doesn't need you there constantly to help.

I wouldn't limit good healthy food. If he's eating it he needs it. Our daughter is 98th percentile, up from 50th at 6 months, which was down from 75th at birth. Always perfectly healthy. They can track around all over the joint. I'd let his appetite dictate his food intake.

At a recent lunch I wrote down what DD ate: half an avocado, chicken and mushroom casserole with couscous, plum crumble and yogurt, one and a half satsumas, and a cocktail sausage which she nicked off another kid's mum. And a biscuit. Because she was still saying she was hungry. They go through stages of eating more than you would believe possible, often balanced by stages of eating very little. It averages out in the end.

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