BLW - table manners

David'sgirl

Hi Ladies,

We have been doing what I call modified BLW since Noah was 8 months old (or so). Now that he is actually eating and feeding himself pretty regularly I was wondering how can we teach him to put the food on his plate when he is done rather than chucking it on the floor!

Is it to early to begin teaching this? 

wifeandmama

He is wayyyy too young to understand manners!  I think my first would sometimes do the food throwing on the floor thing until 1.5ish.

nekorayne

wifeandmama:

He is wayyyy too young to understand manners!  I think my first would sometimes do the food throwing on the floor thing until 1.5ish.

I agree. It is a part of learning. My Pedi actually gives us  a piece of paper each well baby visit with info for the upcoming months. On it he told us we could start purees or finger foods and to remember that throwing food on the floor at this age is all in the name of science and learning!

For now food is a learning experience and needs to be thoroughly explored. "Where does it go when on the flloor" seems messy to us, but for our baby it is an experiment worth knowing!

jen5-03

You've got another year of food on the floor.

But I don't think it's too early to START teaching him. I would start with teaching him the sign for all done. Once he has that down, if you keep giving him food after he says all-done then there will be food on the floor. But if you take the food away when he signs all-done then you stand a chance of keeping more of it on the table.

Don't get me wrong, kids this age just think it's fun to watch things fall just to say uh-oh! So there will still be a lot of food tossing.

C-Charm

When we go out to eat, we just plan on leaving a pretty decent tip for the waiter. 

vegemom302

C-Charm:

When we go out to eat, we just plan on leaving a pretty decent tip for the waiter. 

Haha on the rare occasions we do go out, this is what we do too! It's just a loud messy experience for everyone.

Brooke81

DS actually is pretty good about not throwing stuff on the floor on purpose now. I can't remember when that started exactly maybe around 12 months or so. We taught him the sign for all done and talked alot about just putting it on the table or plate an not on the floor if he didn't want it. It still happens occasionally and of course stuff gets dropped on accident.

I don't think you can get mad or expect him not to do it but you can talk to him about it and guide his hand back to the table if you see he is going to drop something on the floor. There is nothing wrong with teaching him what is appropriate as long as you aren't mean about it an don't expect too much of him.

WyoGal

Truthfully, I'm amazed at how well M is picking up table manners without a whole lot of real teaching.  He did go through a pretty long dropping food on the floor phase.  I agree with PP about teaching the sign for "all done."  That worked for us for a while and then M started to drop food on the floor again instead of signing.  After the meal we'd also encourage M to pick up the food he dropped.  We didn't use it as a deterrent or punishment or push the issue if he was melting down, but just to reinforce personal responsibility.  Luckily he likes to pick things up as we count them. 

We switched to using a plate and now he will push his plate away when he's done.  I think having the food still in front of him when he was full was frustrating him.  Now we're on to utensils, which M really wants to use but just doesn't have the dexterity so he gets frustrated. 

 One caveat about "all done" is in our experience, it's definitely its own learning process.  M would sign all done and then want to get back up 2 mins. later or would whine for the foods on our plate.  This up-down-up-down was more frustrating to me than the dropped food but it was his method of exploring the meaning of "more" and "all done".