I've about had it with this one.  He throws food at almost every meal.

I was telling him no and taking him out of the chair, then putting him back when he "asked" (raises his arms; he can't talk beyond "no"), but the wife thought that just upset him more.  I don't like that she puts food on his tray and then waits to see if he's going to eat it or throw it.  It's like a setup to fail, and if he throws it, she says no and there's no consequence.

What I get from browsing online is that everybody agrees preverbal is too young for punishment.  Here are some other things I have heard:

* Figure out what he really wants.  I think I know this.  He find it offensive to have food he doesn't like in front of him; he's cleaning his tray and dirtying the floor.  There's also the fun toddlers have from dropping things. 

Sometimes also he's mad, and he sweeps everything onto the floor to express it.

* Say "no!" and distract him.  "If you want to throw we'll go play ball.  No throwing food."

* Say "no!" and give him a timeout.  The purpose is not punishment but to get him away from the situation.  I'm not sure why.  I wonder if "timeout" is really meant to apply to tantrums -- the language talks of baby getting out of the environment and calming, which would make sense really only if he isn't calm already, right? -- and this is not a tantrum; it's sort of a bookkeeper's urge.  I feel it myself sometimes.  I don't have room to do what I want on a kitchen counter so I sweep everything off into the sink or the trash.  The wife hates it when I do that.  Not from the mess, but "I was using that!"

* Consider if he has an eating disorder.  He's gotten so he won't touch vegetables and is very untrusting about things we hand him that aren't bread, meat, or pizza.  But isn't this typical?  And he doesn't seem to have daintiness about food.  Last year I smashed banana onto his hands to see if he'd recoil.  He looked at me like I was crazy, but didn't have a problem with it.

* Suffer through it.  My wife an I agreed before not to spank.  I said, sure, my friend Kevin's kids are very well-behaved and they've never been spanked.  So I asked him about this.  He said, "Eventually they grow out of wanting to."  So much for "well-behaved."

I would love to have some option that doesn't make the wife feel too cruel -- not for long, anyway -- and actually gets him to stop.  He's developmentally 1 y o.  We have to face the fact that he may just not get it.  But he does put down cords when we say "no," so he does understand what no means.

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When mine threw food, they were done eating.

It didn't take long for them to realize that throwing food meant they were done. So if they wanted to eat they had better not throw it.
Thats it in a nutshell.

IF theres time to throw food. Thats there way of saying there not hungry.
My day care provider taught the kids how to sign when they were finished eating. My child is 3 now Which if I was to read it sounds amazing but aparently it was very easy for children to pick up. My nephew age 2 now, who also stays with this day care provider can sign when hes hungry, thirsty an when he wants more. Heres an article on it. The big thing is being consistent.

http://www.themomcrowd.com/ready-set-sign

http://www.themomcrowd.com/how-to-teach-your-baby-to-stop-throwing-...
Thanks; I think we can use some of this.

We've been teaching Liam sign for a year, and he's finally gotten a few (past the universal "pick me up"). He can sometimes do "more" and "yay." Still no progress on "all done," but when he's *not* done he pushes that tray back down when we try to remove it to let him out.

Sometimes he throws food when he is not done -- he objects to being taken out. He just doesn't like the food. (If he could use the "milk" sign, that also would help; he throws food when he wants a drink instead. Then he throws the drink.)

I want to try the thing about making sure the food goes back onto the tray, so he gets used to things he isn't just about to eat still being there.
If the child understands the word "no", and he understands that he is upsetting you by doing this, yet he is persisting in doing it anyway, then nothing else is really material---his age, his level of verbal skills, or even the bit about "find[ing] out what he really wants". And someone REALLY suggested you consider an "eating disorder"? {insert big sigh here}

I'm, of course, not there to see what you're seeing, and I don't know your boy. I DO know that learning boundaries and learning to fear incurring Dad's wrath are a healthy and necessary part of growing up and learning respect, and I don't really care which trendy "positive-parenting" expert (who had probably never raised so much as a pony--let alone a kid) thinks otherwise.

If I knew that the boy understood that he was not to throw food and he did it anyway, I'd sternly warn him that I was putting food on his high chair, and if he threw it, I was going to spank him and put him to bed for a nap. Then, if he did it anyway, I'd sharply yell, "NO! That's WRONG! and I'd do just that--out of the chair, a good swat on the rear, and off to his bedroom we'd go (even if I was going to let him out again after a short while). And I'd be VERY consistent about it and KEEP doing this until he got the message that I wasn't giving up.

People can have long and loud debates all day about the merits (or demerits) of spanking or strictly correcting misbehavior with unpleasant consequences, saying it teaches wrong lessons. But when the debates are over and everybody gets back to their lives, you've still got a kid to raise, and philosophical arguments aren't getting the job done. You've got to consider each kid individually. Let me ask you a sobering question--what are you teaching him by letting him get away with it?
The kind of eating disorder that involved hypersensitivity to textures is common enough in disabled children. Liam doesn't have it. The reference to this and food throwing was on a web page. It wasn't about anorexia or bulimia.
I haven't spanked my son, but I have given him an ice cold bath as punishment; just a sponge bath with the cold water tap running - not a soak. It's now the ultimate "if you do that one more time..." threat. I've only had to do it twice to date. Wife compared it to water-boarding, but she was being facetious.

Hope this helps,

-Orrbitron
I've been water-boarded. That ain't it. But, I've also let my kid run around outside in his diaper, yesterday, because he insisted. He wasn't out very long before he was running back pointing at his coat. My punishments mainly involve making him sit still, because he hates that.
When my son got to the age of defiant eating habits, we came up with a solution that worked great for us. The plate went straight onto the floor and the dog ate whatever was left. There was just something about the immediate consequence of watching another creature getting what he thought was "his" that drove home the lesson.

The first time came as quite a shock to the little fella! Really rocked his world! It didn't take too long for his behavior to improve drastically. Now that they are older, his table manners are far better than his sister's, who did not have the benefit of this little life lesson because by then our dog was knocking on a bit and her old gut couldn't handle scraps any more. Pity!
Mine fed his food to the dog. He got a real kick out of watching the dog catch the food so it never touched the floor.
Have you tried taking his food away? We did that whenever our son would throw his food. Eventually, he learned that he couldn't eat if he threw food. We'd take it away until he calmed down and then give it back, but take it away again if he threw food.

Patience is the hard part. We're the "tough love, face the consequences" kind of parents. If he wants to be naughty at dinner, that just means no dinner (of course, we actually give him dinner, but we take it away for a time). The best example of this parenting is the Captain in The Sound of Music, when the children go to see Maria and lie that they've been picking berries. "Well then, you must be all full...no dinner for you!" Well, that's not an exact quote.

Anyway, it works. Our 2-year-old is pretty well behaved. Our 1-year-old is a little challenging still.
We've had success with putting the food back on his plate -- thanks, Roman, for the links. He hasn't done much food throwing in the past few days. I think it's sort of a bookkeeper's urge: I'm not using this, so it needs to go away.

And last night he did it anyway, so he went to his room.

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