5 Ways We Got Our Toddler to Stop Throwing Food

When Lee was about 15 months old, he was a food-throwing terror. The underside of our table was crusted over with oatmeal and the walls were streaked with avocado and pureed carrots. Every meal took 45 minutes to clean up and I felt like I needed a stiff drink afterward.

After several months of this, we determined that this wasn’t a phase we could tolerate and had to proactively thwart Lee’s food flinging. So here is how we got our young toddler to stop throwing food at the dinner table…

1. Adjust their high-chair to be ergonomically correct and comfortable.

First up, check to see if your child isn’t comfortable in their high chair. If the chassis is too tight, their feet are dangling, or they’re scrunched up, they’re going to be more focused on how uncomfortable they are than the meal. 

For Lee, he was annoyed that his high chair tray was too small and that he was marooned and isolated from the dining room table instead of bellying up to the table with us. Throwing food became a clever tactic to get us to come closer to him and at his level. Once we removed the tray he had outgrown and swapped out our counter-height table, it dramatically reduced the amount of food throwing nearly immediately. 

The feeding experts behind the blog and resource Feeding Littles wrote this comprehensive article to help cross-check that your toddler’s high chair suits their frame and sets them comfortably up for mealtime success.

2. Tell your toddler what they can or should do at mealtimes. 

This requires a little practice and patience, but it will ultimately be a calmer approach to guiding your child’s mealtime behavior: Instead of putting your directives in the negative (i.e., “Don’t throw your plate on the ground!” or “Stop standing up in your high chair!”) instruct your child with what they should do, “I want you to keep your plate on the table,” and “Chairs are for sitting. We sit in our chairs.” 

It took us a while to fight the impulsive reaction of, “Stop throwing!” With enough time, however, Lee started responding to our instructions without much push back.

3. Introduce an empty second bowl.

Lee usually threw the food he least liked overboard. It wasn’t really a protest, but it was his way of telling me, “I don’t want this near me, but I don’t know where it should go, so I’m throwing it on the ground and out of sight.”

So an easy fix for our family was the addition of what we call the Boop! Bowl; “If you don’t want to eat something, it’s okay. Just place it *boop!* into this empty bowl.” (Other more normal families call this the “No Thank You Bowl.”) This empty bowl offered Lee a place to cast aside the food he didn’t want, so it didn’t end up on the floor.

I highly recommend you get a bowl that sticks to the table (like this Avanchy Bamboo Baby Bowl) so that your little one doesn’t accidentally spill it and its contents over as they reach to place a food item in the bowl.

4. Reduce the amount of food on their plate.

I love seeing a well-plated dinner with all the fixings, a garnish, and gravy drizzled just right. Lee, however, is easily overwhelmed by the presentation and gets frustrated when his favorite side dish is buried underneath the grilled chicken. And that’s why the chicken ends up on the ground…

Instead of plating their full meal, dish out a tiny serving (think two green beans and a spoonful of chicken) so they can wrap their little minds around the different foods offered. Also, with less food on their plate, the less there is for them to throw and less to clean up. Win-win!

5. Eat with them.

Now that Lee is eating at a more reasonable hour and not the Early Bird special, we aim to always have family meals. Modeling good dining habits is a great way to teach your munchkin proper table manners.

I will say that it doesn’t always make for the most peaceful meal: Lee will spill his water, he gets tired and whines to hold the salt shaker, or he’ll start experimenting with what we call, “Green bean-infused water” which is when Lee puts green beans or broccoli or whatever into his drinking glass and then sips it. So while it’s not necessarily a relaxing time, we have seen gradual improvements in Lee’s mealtime attention span and his behavior at the dinner table. 

For more pointers on how we improved Lee’s table manners, check out our blog post on the topic!