After buying specific groceries and painstakingly preparing the food in a specific way that your baby can safely consume it, you may feel exasperated when most, or all of it, ends up on the floor!
This experience is actually very common and is developmentally appropriate. Your child is learning object permanence! Most importantly, your child is getting more benefits than you would believe from this meal.
However, for your sanity and respect to the produce you bought, here are some tips on how to ensure more of the food you prepared makes it to your baby’s mouth-or at least near their mouth.
- Bibs and Splash Mats: Mitigate the mess in a way that feels good to you. Babies learn a lot about a food by exploring the texture and smell through touch, but there are a variety of ways to control the messiness. If you’re ok with your baby getting a bit messy, you can have them explore foods wearing only their diaper. If you’d like to keep them dressed, there are great smock bibs and silicone bibs to catch messes. A splash mat on the floor is also very helpful so good doesn’t go to waste and you can place it back on their tray. If cleaning a splash at is too time consuming, try using a towel or newspapers.
- Reduce the Servings Size: Remove the plate full of food and present one piece of food at a time on a plate. If you have a dog, it’s also helpful to put them away so you’re little one is not entertained by feeding them
- Stay Calm. To limit reinforcing the throwing behaviors by acting animated and giving the child attention, try to not react to the thrown food. Try to ignore it and redirect the attention to wanted behaviors (i.e. eating and exploring the food).
- Guide the Baby’s Hand Back to the Tray or Their Mouth. Ideally before the baby drops the food, gently redirect their hand back to eating the food and give them praise. This action communicates to the baby the behavior you would like them to do and provides positive reinforcement. You will nee: to do this many times but babies learn through repetition.
- Read their Hunger Cues. When the baby is full, they’ll show signs such as turning away, closing their mouth, or spreading and rubbing food on their tray. It’s best to learn their signs so you can finish the meal before they cause a bigger mess and learn that you’ll respect their wishes before it gets to that point.