Pushing food out of his mouth

[Moffgal]

Hi,

For the last couple of weeks since its been hot I've been doing a finger food buffet type thing for Conor's lunch. We have bread with something on it, with cheese, cucmber, tomatoes, olives, ham, turkey, etc all in a bowl for Conor to eat himself. At first it went really well, I loved the way Conor could choose what he liked to eat- he really loves olives!

But these last few days I've found it a real struggle. Basically he's just messing around with the food and not eating enough. He'll chew and roll food around in his mouth and then push it out onto his bib. In response to this I say 'Conor, no that is naughty', with stern mummy face and voice, but I get no reaction and he continues. He's not even eating the sandwich bit of the lunch, he just wafts it around the place, even though in the morning he'll happily eat toast or crumpet for brekkie.

I know he's not eating enough of his lunch as he's just polished off a mahoosive bowl of fromage frais and fruit puree for pudding. So I'm not sure what to do. I really want to continue with encouraging self feeding as he's always been really good at it and it'd be loads easier to be able to put a plate down in front of him and let him get on with it!

Any ideas?

Moffgal

ETA- He's almost 11mths, must get my ticker sorted out over here!

[Bert2e]

Call me mean but we've always been "no pudding if you don't eat a significant portion of your main course" in this house. Children will eat when they are hungry and wont starve themselves but are very quick to work out how to get the bit they want - usually the sweet bit!

Just thought - is he teething? DS always goes funny over food when teeth are shifting!

[bisy backson]

i was also going to suggest teething, splashy does that quite a lot when his teeth hurt.

the only other thing i can think of is maybe he's just bored of the food? if you've given him the same thing every day for a while he might have got over the novelty and be looking for something else to eat? especially if he's still hungry afterwards.

i get really frustrated with splash when he does this though so i sympathise! i just take his food away and try something else and if he doesn't want that then that's the end of it.

i wouldn't worry too much, if he's hungry he'll eat, and if he's not eating one type of food it might be because he just doesn't fancy it at the moment which is fair enough imo - in that case try something you know he will eat and leave it at that - at least he's eaten something.....

bbxx