Dr. Bob: My one-year-old daughter will throw her food from her highchair. My family thinks it’s cute but at the end of a busy day, I don’t since I have to clean it up. What advice do you have?
Answer: I completely understand your problem. I’m sure that she is smiling and probably laughing as the food leaves the highchair tray and falls to the ground. The family pet might be there to even scoop it up. While you understand that she finds it fun, you are tired and doing so many things at once – fixing dinner, serving dinner, feeding your toddler, assessing the status of the rest of the family and trying to plan for what’s ahead. You’re tired and would love just to sit back and relax. But you can’t.
Let’s take a step back for a minute to analyze the situation.
- Pause – This is tough but sometimes just taking that deep breath can be very helpful. Knee-jerk reactions, more often than not, do not lead to good things. A pause can lead to the next step.
- Assess – The assessment here is two-fold – 1) What is the child doing? They are engaging in normal behavior for a 1-year-old. In the process of learning to feed oneself with finger food, it is perfectly natural to put some in the mouth, to smear some on the tray and to fling some “overboard” to the floor below. We should actually encourage this behavior (steps 1 and 2) but to need to monitor it; 2) What is your state of mind? To be a conscious parent, we need to understand our child’s developmental stage and our own status. Internal questions such as the following can be helpful – Am I paying attention to my toddler or am I distracted? Am I worried about something else other than feeding my toddler? Am I upset about something that is occupying my mind? The purpose of this self-assessment is to re-focus to the task at hand. Some of the things that might be distracting or upsetting you will need to be addressed, just not right now. The task at hand is to assure that your toddler is adequately fed in as nurturing a manner as possible. But be ever mindful that you have to address those other things, just not right now.
- Choose – Now what to do? Every family is different, but I would encourage you (or your spouse or a responsible older sibling) to make sure that attention, direct attention, is being paid to the toddler. Less food will hit the ground this way. Don’t raise your voice (or the alternate feeder’s voice) stating that such behavior is bad. I would not encourage the food-flinging but do not consider abnormal. Just calmly make sure that you state that “we want to keep the food on the tray.” Don’t put too much food on the tray. Clean up the food after the toddler is done eating. Remember that part of this behavior is exploratory (“look what I can do!”), and part of this behavior might be attention-getting (“I’m over here and if you don’t come over, I know how I can get your attention!”).
This simple example of food throwing reminds of the need to PAUSE, ASSESS, then CHOOSE our reactions (verbal and physical) to the behaviors of our children. That deep breath, a calm assessment and a measured choice will go far in the moment and the days ahead.
Dr. Saul is Professor of Pediatrics (Emeritus) at Prisma Health and his website is www.mychildrenschildren.com. Contact Dr. Bob at askdrbobsaul@gmail.com with more questions.