How do you feel about mess in your house? Do you mind when your little ones get food all over themselves? What about when they continue to drop food all over the floor?
Getting messy is an important part to learning about food. Allowing your little one to play with their food, squish it in their hand and make a mess is all part of learning about textures and cause and effect. Your little one might deliberately drop food off the side of the high chair and watch what happens, it may stay on the ground, you might pick it up, the dog might eat. This is all part of learning. Your child is learning if I do this then X will happen. This is a normal part of development. Allowing your child to play with their food helps to decrease the chances of picky eating developing later.
Some tips that I found helpful when teaching little ones to eat
A plastic drop sheet to go under the highchair can help reduce the cleaning time. When your little one is finished you can simply pick it up and shake it off outside. Or get a dog, they are amazing at cleaning the floor after your toddler has eaten.
A Bibado bib is great if your little one tends to drop a lot of food in their lap. It also helps to keep their clothes and themselves clean. My tip would be to buy a few of them so you can use them each meal time. These bibs were a game changer for me.
Introduce a side bowl for your little one to put food into it that they don’t want to eat. This was again another game changer for me. Teaching them to put food into the bowl rather than throwing it on the floor was great and helped when we wanted to eat out too.
