On the floor in seconds, keep offering more?

[Cyan]

LO is constantly shoving her food off her tray. Sometimes it's while she's trying to pick it up, sometimes when it's stuck to her hand and she waves her arms about. I keep offering more until she's gone through her portion and started on mine too, we're wasting mountains of food this way though.

Do I put a clean sheet down and pick it up off the floor?? While there aren't any immediate hygiene issues doing this I don't know if it will give bad habits for the future.

I could get through a man size portion of food and she'll keep taking it. How do I know when to stop?

 

[MindUtopia]

Just pick it up on the floor and offer it to her again. There aren't any hygiene issues in your own home or most restaurants (unless you're feeding her in a place where there genuinely would be, like in a hospital or a public toilet or somewhere there might actually be a risk of coming in contact with pathogens through fecal matter or blood splatter - that's not most people's homes). Actually exposure to routine germs is really good for babies and there's no need to avoid it. If she's dropping it while trying to eat, just pick it up again, no need to let it go to waste. You may also find she eventually pushes things off her tray when she's finished (once you get used to her cues, it will be obvious) as she can't vocalize this. Then you can just clean up and discard anything you don't want to keep.

 

[KayBea]

i used to just pick it up off the floor & give it back to her. i cant stand wasting food. xx

 

[iiTTCii]

I feel like I live my life cleaning our kitchen floor after meal times, so I think I'd be happy to eat off my floor, it's that clean.

Just pick it up and offer it to her again. When I go to a restaurant, I always give the floor a quick clean with a wipe around her highchair before I feed her and do the same there.

 

[lily28]

I sweep and mop the floor everyday, and we don't use shoes inside the house, so food that he drops on the floor is good to eat. He never had an upset tummy.
Pushing food of the high chair tray and throwing it down is a developmental stage, all kids do it.

 

[Cyan]

Thank you all, I've started picking up off the floor after your unanimous green light.

I don't know why I was being so silly about it, I just felt like the mummy police would come knocking if I was feeding her floor food. I've stopped being so daft now!

 

[sue_88]

If it hits the floor for the third time I leave it. Anything under that gets picked up and straight back on the table!