My 1.5 year old dd is always throwing food on the floor! I try to keep a good eye on her so that she doesn't do this, but it still seems to happen. How do you discipline or prevent this? Or is it just something all kids do and I just have to get used to picking up food for the rest of my life? :roll:

It's just stage most kids go through. They won't be doing it the rest of your life, I promise. :) I always tell my ds who is one -"no, no!" But really there is not much else you can do when they are that little. I always just pick up the big stuff and then use the dustbuster under the table. My quick clean-up trick. :wink:

We would leave the food on the floor and tell them "all gone". They get the message pretty quick when there is nothing for them to eat! :wink:

During the learning stage you could lay an old bedsheet spread out under the eating area..I've done this with all the kids I've kept...Never met one that didn't like to throw food on the floor or wear a pasta bowl as a hat :wink:

You could try just taking away her food when she starts throwing it. Tell her that if she is going to throw her food that you will take it away.

Usually when she does it it's because she's trying to share her food with the cats :roll: :lol:
One time she threw her yoghurt and it went everywhere ... she got a Time Out for that. It wasn't that long ago... so I know she is old enough to know better.

I am with Tara....I tell DD (who is 13 1/2 months old) no, and if she does it again, she gets a hand slap. She's old enough to know what she is doing because she will look at me, dangle something over the side of the tray and wait for my reaction, if she wasn't old enough to know it was wrong, she would just keep throwing it down. I have only had to slap her had a few times....she has learned to obey pretty quickly!



Amber

Ditto!

I tell my daughter (19 mths) that meal time is all done and then I ask her to help me clean up the mess. I give her a paper towel and she "helps" we wipe the mess.

It's pretty typical, from what I understand, to throw food at this age :)

I get so tired of cleaning food off the floor after every meal... thanks for the tips!

Things are going better in this department. I love C'moms! If she throws food on the floor I say no and that I will take her food away if she does it again. So then if she does it again I take her food away. Then once she is down from her chair I make her pick up all the food she threw on the floor. It sure seems to be working! Thanks again!

Ds does this too and for the while it was really aggravating me until it dawned on me why he was doing it: he tries to "clean up" when he is done eating by sweeping his leftover food onto the floor, just like he sees me wipe down the table after we eat :o :lol:. I only pieced it together because he also "cleans" off the coffee table if dh leaves stuff on it, and also puts his cup and dishes in the sink when he is done with them; I never taught him to do this, he just loves to clean up like his mama!

Now there are times when he just isn't hungry and is being a skootch by dropping pieces one by one onto the floor. When he does this I pull his chair away from the table and have him sit there and wait until the meal is over and I clean up the mess; that's absolute torture for a 19 month old and gets the point across without feeding into it to the point where he learns to do it to get extra attention.