How can I get my baby to stop throwing food?
By queenbean
@queenbean (97)
United States
May 19, 2007 5:17pm CST
My 11-month-old daughter has recently started throwing her food. She loves to eat, but she'll just randomly pick up a handful of green beans or broccoli or whatever she's eating and toss it to the floor. When we tell her no, she just looks us dead in the eye and does it again. Any ideas for getting her to stop doing this?
For the record, we're a no-spanking, no yelling household. I need creative solutions.
2 responses
@mememama (3076)
• United States
20 May 07
Only put a few bites of that food on the tray. This will save a big mess! She likes watching things drop, so at a different time, take her outside and let her throw things off a patio or something like that so she can experiment that way and get it our of her system (hopefully lol). Sometimes my son would climb on a chair or couch and throw random things off of that. Another thing to try is to present the food in a different way, like in a different bowl, with sauce for veggies. Kids can be real funny, my son has to have things a certain way on his plate or he won't eat, like he has to stab sandwiches with a fork!
@queenbean (97)
• United States
20 May 07
Good suggestion. Last night my husband said she maybe didn't like the food, because she was only throwing the green beans and not the peas and carrots, but I know she likes green beans. So I gave her the peas and carrots to feed herself, just a few at a time, but I hand-fed her the green beans. It worked for some reason. She did start throwing the peas toward the end of the meal, but it was much less messy than before.
I have noticed that she likes to "clean" surfaces. Like she'll throw EVERYTHING off the coffee table, and she empties the bookshelf at least 3 times a day. Maybe she's only throwing the things that aren't her favorite... like, she likes peas better than green beans, so she just throws the beans but keeps the peas because she's hungry. I do'nt know. All I know is, she has never EVER thrown a blueberry... they're her absolute favorite. :-P
@foxyfire33 (10005)
• United States
19 May 07
I applaud you for your no spanking, no yelling rule! It's realy hard to fight the urge sometimes but I think the children are happier and at times easier to deal with.
This is the only idea I have come up with but it comes with no guarantees because my 2 year old still throws his food sometimes when he's full or has decided he doesn't want that particular food anymore. What I would do with mine is when they started throwing, I would just remove the food from their high chair tray and say "No throwing". If they were hungry they would learn not to throw. Like I said though it doesn't necessarily keep them from ever throwingm they just won't throw the food they want.
@queenbean (97)
• United States
19 May 07
Yeah, we've been doing the remove the food, say "no throwing" thing... she's only been doing it for a few days, so it hasn't had time to work. I'm kind of unsure that it will work, only because she's a patient kid -- she'll wait me out on a lot of things. She's very headstrong. :-P But I'll keep plugging away, and hopefully it will work. Thanks for the suggestion.
As far as the no yelling thing... it's been very hard to not raise my voice a few times. Like today, when she kept turning the TV off and on and off and on off on off on and would NOT stop, and no amount of distraction and redirection would deter her. She is stubborn. :-)
