Tripp trap with no tray experiences

[oliveroses]

Hello! A friend has given me her old style Tripp trap chair - have heard such great things. It is old style so not all accessories fit including a tray. No problem I thought, so good to have baby at the table straight away with toddler. However, a few issues.

• table is quite high compared to a tray
• I can't sit facing the baby because we are around a table
• high chair toys and bowls with suction cups don't stick as the table is wood (and I guess has little knots in it)
• I can't really use a mat over the wood as baby just pushes it away or plays with it - ditto with food bowls and plates - and I'd hoped to do more baby led weaning this time so I don't know where to put the food without a tray

Starting to think I should just reassemble my plastic high chair and come to the Tripp trap later once we are past initial weaning stage.

Any thoughts or experience of this?!

I got a tray which sticks (suctions) to the table, but I can't for the life of me remember if it was a Stokke one or something else! But that solved the problem for us.

My toddler sits at the table in hers without the tray. I do have a patterned vinyl tablecloth on my table though which bowls etc suction to, plus it’s saved my nice wooden table from a lot of spag bol etc stains.

Ah - a vinyl table cloth! Hadn't even occurred to me. Genius. Thank you!! And a tray would stick to that too

We had tripp trapps for my boys as babies. Now they are 16 and 19, and we still use them as spare chairs at the dinner table when we have guests.
(we don't make guests use them - guests get proper chairs!)
Ours never had the trays and we found it fine against the table. Get a good heavy gauge plastic or oilcloth table cloth and suction bowls will stick. With BLW we put food straight on the clean table quite often.

I just pushed it up to the table, looking more like a normal chair is the best bit about a tripp tripp IMO! Have you tried wetting the underside of the suction plate to see if that will help it stick? But we didn’t really use those sticky plates, purées initially and then they were happy with a normal plastic ikea toddler plate and didn’t try to chuck it (DS and any vegetables on it is another story though!)

Have you looked second hand for an old style tray? I saw old style baby sets on FB market place and EBay when I was looking, there might be trays. I do find the tray easier for BLW (and I worry about trapping fingers with the table) but don't worry nothing suction sticks to the tray well either!

@AmyDubanowski and @HarelessMiffy I don't suppose you have any recommendations for brand of tablecloth? I just bought a wipe clean one from habitat but it's so porous, not what I expected at all! I think I need one with a really plasticky finish.

@Writerscompanion I will have a look. This one was made in 1995!

@oliveroses I always get mine from Dunelm!

We only had Tripp Trapps for our kids, we found them super versatile. How old is your child? Do you need a baby set/accessory? Or is your child old enough to just sit on the chair?

Can the Tripp Trapp not be adjusted so that the table is at a better height? We have a square table, so I sat at 90° on the next side, it was easy to feed baby like that. Could you do similar?

I bought vinyl tablecloths from John Lewis and also ebay.

I had a weirdly porous one (edit: tablecloth) from Sainsbury's. The one I had from John Lewis has been much harder to stain and it was one of their cheap brands so not stupidly expensive.

I got a tray for ours on eBay.

@SalGoodwoman I think the seat is at the highest setting. But I have rearranged things so I can sit at 90 degrees. The toddler needs to sit on the other end as otherwise the booster seat doesn't give his legs enough room under the table, so have worked around that. Baby is 6 months and can sit fine in the baby seat (it isn't a newborn insert, it just has a higher back and a strap between legs)

@Ineffable23 yes, this is kind of Sainsbury’s as it's Argos/habitat - so weird! I mean it's nice but it isn't what I am after!

@LeafHunter ok encouraging, will do some research. So confused about all the models of this chair over the years and its accessories!

We have a Tripp trapp without a tray, used it for both DDs. We just use the baby attachment, harness and cushion and push the chair under the table so she uses the table as her tray. We have a cheap dining table so aren't worried about it getting ruined during these years however we have put a vinyl table cloth down recently.
I personally hate the tripp trapp highchair, it was a gift when my eldest was born. The paint is chipping off, it's not easy to clean because there are so many difficult areas to reach and it's just so huge and bulky I'm always falling over it!! Plus it's really ugly in my opinion

Plus I just sit to the side of it and feed her that way, it's not difficult or uncomfortable

@Suchardchoccy the thing that is really baffling me is that I think I have to take the whole side off with an Allen key in order to wash the seat cushion. That is going to be dispensed with pretty quickly!

@oliveroses oh our seat cushion just clips underneath and hooks over the back 🤔

Same! I had 2 at one point and used to swap them daily because DS really was thar messy.

@InTheRainOnATrain yep sounds about right! Ours is a completely different colour on one side now 🤣
Plus with the tripp trapps, they are so expensive and the "extras" which you do need, are eye wateringly expensive and imo just not worth the price

@Suchardchoccy @InTheRainOnATrain I don't know if this is something to do with the old model I have - the strap between the baby's legs is leather and cannot be moved or dismantled while the chair is fully assembled so in order to get the strap through the hole in the cushion I have to take half the thing apart ...

Here is a pic

That must be an ancient model! Love the vintage aesthetic so I hate to say it but maybe it’d be easier to give it back to your friend and get your plastic one back out. I couldn’t be doing with a non removable cushion, no wonder they redesigned it years ago!!

@oliveroses oh wow that does look old, I would say just don't have the cushion but I suppose it will be a bit uncomfortable!

John Lewis usually have a range of vinyl tablecloth fabrics you can have cut to size. We've had ours for about 4 years (held on with table cloth clips so a baby can't pull it down on themselves) and it's just starting to pick up a few stains, so lasted really well. Suction stuff held pretty well on it, although of course some are better than others.

I also did the sitting 90 degrees to baby.

For the cushion, I used to use a piece of old yoga mat in the wooden high chairs you get in cafés to stop them sliding about when they were really wee, easy to wipe clean and just cut another piece if it gets manky. Could you remove the existing cushion and then use something like that?

I didn’t even bother with the cushion with mine, bought new 3.5 years ago. Just sat Ds on the wooden part and he was fine. Easy to wipe.
We have silicone mat from Liewood, for table, same 1 I use at every meal since weaning and just wipe after ad it looks as new

@skkyelark thank you - great idea about the yoga mat!

@Caspianberg thanks so much - yes, thinking tablecloth is definitely the way to go.

No sleep last night so my brain is struggling to deal at the moment but we will get there!