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How do you discipline a 14 month old?
Daniel's going through a phase where he thinks throwing food on the floor during meals is hilarious. ?It's so frustrating! ?And I know every child goes through this, but what do you do about it? ?Will it pass on its own? ?Do we have to break him of this bad habit? ?And if so, how do we do that?
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Re: How do you discipline a 14 month old?
I would take all the food away whenever he does it, and with as little reaction as possible. The more upset and/or loud you get, the more he wins
It can also help to only give him a tiny bit of food at a time. Like one bite's worth. Less tempting to throw it, and less mess to clean up when he tosses it anyway. Good luck.
Jack went though that at around the same time. It lasted for about a month and with no reaction from us, he's over it. Now, if we see him starting to throw food (like he has it in his hand and he's holding it over his high chair) we just hold out our hand and say, "Thank you," and he'll hand it to us.
I always try to remember that a lot of what they do is developmentally appropriate and part of their learning. I would MUCH rather him drop a cracker from his high chair to learn that things fall than drop daddy's glasses while dh is holding him to learn than things fall- kwim?
DD isn't 14 mos old, but she's been doing this for awhile. She'll look right at you, smile, then drop it on the floor or feed the dogs.
I don't believe in using food in punishment so I wouldn't take it all away from her, but I do what MC said. We only give her a little at a time anyway, so if she keeps trying to get rid of it then I just don't put any more on her tray.
We would try to put our hand under it or when we saw her starting to do it, we would hold out our hand and say "may I have that, please" or "I'll take it" or "thank you". I'm not sure how long it lasted, but she doesn't do it anymore. She will occasionally try to feed the dogs, but we say no and she stops right away.
I do think it's a normal part of development, including testing boundaries. I think they need to learn it's not appropriate, I don't think punishment is the way to go unless it's gets to a point where they are clearly doing it to be mischievous as opposed to thinking it's fun to drop stuff on the floor.
And that gets to exactly what I was wondering about. ?I don't want to stifle something he's supposed to be doing right now -- even if the thing he's doing is kinda hard to live with -- but I also don't want to be "that parent" who just lets their kids run amok and doesn't set and enforce boundaries, you know?
We've been doing the holding out the hand thing and the dinner's over for now thing, and I guess we'll just keep that up. ?It doesn't seem to be helping much, but we'll just trust that this too shall pass. ?:)
Thanks, everyone!?
When Abby was really young and did it I did what most of the PP said. Put my hand and take it from them with a "thank you" etc. But once she was older and was VERY clearly knew it was wrong and just trying to test us, I would let her do it three times then we took her food away and feed her instead of her feeding herself. We would give a clear warning on the first two times. Once she did it a third time we took the food and she had to go through us to eat. She hated being feed and would much rather feed herself so it worked really well.
good luck!
Ditto. Now that she's getting a bit older, we just frown and say, "That's not pretty Caroline." And then ignore it if she keeps doing it. But most of the time we just don't give her enough to "play" with.