is there a way to teach babies not to stuff their faces?

[heygrey]

i'm pretty sure R has an entire half of a mini bagel in his mouth right now. when he likes something he wants ALL OF IT IN MY MOUTH NOW, thank you.

i can cut his food up into bite size pieces and give him one bite at a time, but that makes mealtime twice as long. he's happy to feed himself and i want to encourage that independence, but i could do without the gagging.

[MamaMaui24]

Just limit how much you give him at a time. Hopefully as he gets bigger he can regulate more.

[longtimenopost]

Yeah, DD will still shove like 30 raisins in her mouth and chew for a while then spit out one large raisin and present it as a gift. Gross. Rationing is the only way we can limit that and the food throwing.

[mellimel19]

Apr 24, 2015 10:37:54 GMT -5 longtimenopost said:

Yeah, DD will still shove like 30 raisins in her mouth and chew for a while then spit out one large raisin and present it as a gift. Gross. Rationing is the only way we can limit that and the food throwing.

DD does the same. We only give her a little bit of food at a time. Otherwise she will just shove it ALL in her mouth at once.

[halfpint]

Yeah, I'm glad to see some of the older babies are still doing this. B is almost 20 months, and he still tries to shove everything in. It's like there's a weird middle place where he can't judge size. If it's cut bite-sized, and there are only a few, he'll feed himself. If it's big, like a whole banana, he'll take a small bite and chew. Somewhere in between, he'll try and shove half a piece of toast, or a whole 1/3 of a banana, or an entire piece of string cheese into his mouth. He chews, realizes it's too big, and spits out a congealed mess of food.

We just how much is in front of him at any given time and encourage him to chew. He's got to learn eventually, right?

[heygrey]

thanks for commiserating, lol.

my other issue is that he doesn't have great pincher grasp so i have to give him large-ish chunks of food if he's to hold it and feed himself. i limit him to one chunk at a time, but it's still 2-4 bites in one piece. sometimes he's fine to bite/chew/swallow/bite, but give him something he LOVES and all bets are off.

i try modeling small bites, but that's clearly futile.

[sent]

We ration. Or else she won't get anything into her tummy and will also vomit out whatever is already there when she tries to swallow and realizes she can't. And then wake up MOTN multiple times because she is hungry from not actually eating during the day. Can't win.

[mrslisa]

DD3 is 21 months and does the same thing. She stuffs her cheeks and then spits it out 10 minutes later. There are some days I am pretty sure she doesn't swallow anything.