Tag: baby eating

I’m not certain when the “right” time is for having baby join family dinner time – if you know any guidelines, I’d love to hear them!  We decided that now is the right time for our family.  Our daughter is just shy of 2 years old and while she has been sitting at the table in her highchair (my post about that learning curve is HERE), it seems like the right time to eat family style.

Until now Sophie has eaten dinner at 5:30 or 6 and then we continued with our nightly routine before putting her to bed.  Now, it seems like she’s happier eating later and closer to her bed time.  We’re happier with this arrangement for her too as it allows her to sleep a little longer in the morning – even a few minutes can make a big difference!  Unfortunately, that puts our grown up dinner later and later – sometimes we’re not even done by 10pm and that is just way too late.  Again, it has to do with maximizing sleep time.

So, we’re in the process of deciding if Sophie joins us for nightly dinners or if we suck it up and eat late.  I’ve always known I’d have family dinners (I did as a child and even when times got really rough we ate together every night and it seemed to hel get us through).  But when to start?  This week we decided to give it a try.

In keeping with Maria Montessori’s adage: not words but virtues, we are attempting to teach table manners to our (almost) 2 year old by modeling the correct behavior.  Teaching through example. Now that we’ve pretty much mastered the “not throwing food on the floor,” it’s time to tackle nutrition, grace and courtesy, and manners.  Whew – that’s a mouthful.  Montessori and much to say about each of these topics and yet I only have the mental ability to begin with these as they relate to the nightly dinner.

Nutrition:  This is a life long lesson I realize, but giving a solid foundation is a parent’s responsibility in my opinion.  By showing Sophie that not only is she served a balanced meal (protein, veggie and starch) but also Mommy and Daddy eat that way every night, I hope to instill in her a “need” for good food.  We don’t praise her for eating what she’s served (well, we try not to) and we don’t offer her food as a reward or withhold it as a punishment.  This creates associations with food that lead to overindulging, stress eating and other bad habits.  If we have dessert, she gets dessert (smaller portion!).  In the interest of full disclose, our daughter will pick out most every veggie and put it aside unless it is a pea or a carrot.  Those she’ll eat.  But, hey, we’ve got to start somewhere.

Grace, courtesy and manners: Since putting a napkin in a 2 year old’s lap is not an option, we do more modeling of grace and courtesy at the dinner table, which fits in nicely with Montessori’s teaching that the sensitive period for grace,  courtesy and manners is 3-6 years old and before that modeling is key.  Still, we use napkins and put then in our laps.  We wait to eat until we are all seated and served, though we don’t say grace or a blessing.  When we have a conversation, we (try to) listen to each other before speaking.  (Note: my husband and I are both talkers, so this one takes practice!)  When it is clear that Sophie is finished, we ask her if she is all done – we’ve taught her the sign language for this, so she can communicate it easily when she feels like it.  This part, truth be told, is hard as she doesn’t always want to communicate clearly and prefers to wiggle and squiggle in her chair.  We try to reinforce the “all done” before we take her out.  “Excuse me”, “thank you”, and “please” will all have to wait until she can actually speak.  Feet and elbows are not allowed though chewing with her mouth open is (for now) as I’m usually thankful that she is actually eating.

Dinner time, as you may suspect, has become hectic.  It’s not the best situation as I prefer to have a nice relaxing dinner, but, for now it’ll do.  Plus, I like to feel like I am sowing the seeds of future mealtimes.

I have an affection for raising our daughter in the Montessori way and have tried, as you may have figured out, to follow the rules but wind up modifying them to fit our needs. I’m certain Maria Montessori would turn over in her grave if she knew we called what we do “Montessori.”

Regardless, this is how it breaks down in our house. We research what the method is, attempt it, and then retro fit the method to our reality. With eating and feeding, these modifications happened quickly with much mess. I pilfered these rules from my Montessori Guru cousin whose blog has excellent info on all things Montessori.

1. No high chairs or propping up in a seat. We tried lap sitting – i.e., Sophie sat in my lap and either I fed her with my free hand that wasn’t holding the food or my husband fed her. While it does work, this method is exhausting for everyone! What with squirming, head shaking, hand waving and general mayhem, the food made it in our little one’s mouth, and all over us, and the table, and the floor.

I stopped to think about what we were teaching our daughter…what I intended to teach our daughter was family dinner time, and this wasn’t it. So, we opted for a high chair that uses our table as the “tray” and Sophie now eats dinner (and lunch and breakfast) at the table, with her own placemat. Teaching her not to throw food overboard on to the floor is an entirely other matter and deserves it’s own post.

2. The container must be see through so the child can see the food. This teaches a child that the food exists outside of them, then through the act of eating, the food goes inside of them. They are just learning about food, so the clarity allows them to see the food as it actually exists, not as purple oatmeal. Also, with all of this talk of BPA contamination, I opted for clear glass tiny bowls and they work perfectly for freezing, microwaving and washing. Also, same goes for water. We uses a small votive glass and it works amazingly well. It can’t hold too much water, so when the glass goes flying, as it inevitably does, it’s really no biggie. I have taken to holding the water for Sophie and letting her use her hands to guide the water in, just to save time with clean-up…again, not a strict adherence to the rule.

3. You offer the food to the baby and the baby either eats or doesn’t eat. No games or tricks. Generally, with patience, this works well. However, Sophie goes through phases of refusing to eat anything unless we eat it. So I found that a few tricks do in fact work and I resort to these when I worry that Sophie will waste away to nothing after 2 days into a food strike.

5. Food is served solo – no mixing. Oatmeal gets one bowl, peas get another. Mac and cheese is served separately from small bites of chicken. I find this one of the hardest to maintain. Sometimes oatmeal won’t cut it, but oatmeal with apples and some cinnamon goes down easy. Also, how am I supposed to get Sophie to eat anything green besides peas if I just serve it to her plain? I don’t eat like that, why should she? Plus, if she will only eat something I’m eating, well, then, you can guess why we break this rule all the time!

Basically we approach feeding the same as we do most things. We figure out the lesson we want to teach and go from there. Keep things simple.