If you’re like me and you have a 9, 10, or 11-month-old baby, you’ll be well versed in this nightmare right now, dealing with a baby throwing food at every meal.
Sadly, dinner isn’t something simple anymore.
Remember when things were easy?
You’d cook your food, put it on a plate, sit down, eat it, put the plate and cutlery straight into the dishwasher, and walk away.
Sometimes I sit back and really miss those days.
Now, mealtime is a multi-step tactical operation.
You have to make your own food, but also make a scaled-down, healthy version for your kid with side dishes like cucumber sticks and hummus to ensure they actually eat something.
All while keeping a spoon ready to shovel.
My Tactical Setup: Pre-Meal Distraction & Plate Control
Once the food is prepped, you have to catch the kiddo and persuade them into their highchair.
If your baby is anything like mine, you have to give her a quick snack just to keep her occupied while you finish plating up and getting the dog out of the room.
Ella’s Kitchen Sweetcorn & Carrot Melty Sticks are her absolute favourite right now, alongside the Little Angels Tomato Flavoured Wheels from ASDA.
I have to get a treat for the dog to lure him out of the room so he doesn’t gain another 2kg. Yes, our dog is actively getting fat from weaning floor scraps!
When plating up, we use plastic plates with three sections: one for a quick snack like a melty stick, one for cucumber and hummus, and the big space for the main meal (she loves big pasta she can grab hold of right now, like rigatoni).
Here is how we break down the pre-meal management so everyone survives dinner:
| Action Step | Our Strategy | Why It Helps |
| Pre-Meal Snack | Hand over a melty stick or tomato wheel in the seat while plating up. | Buys 3-5 minutes of peace so you can finish cooking without a breakdown. |
| Manage the Dog | Lure the dog into another room with a treat before food hits the table. | Keeps him from overeating and stops him hovering under the highchair trying to encourage her to drop food with his puppy dog eyes. |
| Piece-by-Piece Serving | Offer 1–2 pieces of pasta or cucumber at a time directly to the baby. | Stops the “windscreen wiper” arm sweep that sends full plates onto the carpet. |
| Parent Tag-Team | Dad eats fast to take over feeding duty so Mam can eat her dinner warm. | Ensures both parents get a hot meal without battling a throwy monster together. |
As Dad, my job at this stage is to eat the food in front of me as quickly as humanly possible so I can take over from Mam so she can actually eat her dinner while it’s warm.
Highchair Hack: Ditch the Tray
We never give our daughter the whole plate.
If we do, the entire thing would end up on the floor.
If she has too much food in front of her, she panics.
Her arms start wiping left to right and back again like windscreen wipers, sending loads of food flying in all directions.
To tackle this, we feed her piece by piece. Pasta shape by pasta shape, or cucumber stick by cucumber stick, and we try our best not to look visibly disappointed when she still chucks it over the edge.
Our biggest breakthrough recently came when we got rid of the tutti bambini highchair tray entirely.
We found things became so much more successful once we pushed her highchair right up to our main dining table.
The table sits at roughly the same height the tray used to be, and we bought a cheap, wipe-clean tablecloth from Dunelm to cover it.
Now, when she throws food forward, it lands on the table in front of her instead of plunging down to the floor and we can scoop it and try and feed it to her again.
If she drops food out to the side, it still goes bye-bye, but bringing her directly to the table with us has easily saved a third of the food we were losing previously.
Yoghurt, Puree & Cleanup
I take over with our shouty, throwy little monster at the end of the table while my wife eats in peace.
Once she’s done, we swap back. I collect our plates, tidy up the kitchen, and get out a small plastic bowl for dessert.
I put a tablespoon of Greek yoghurt into the bowl and mix in a packet of fruit puree. At the moment, her favourite is Ella’s Kitchen Prunes Prunes Prunes (she loves it).
We always aim for a spoonfed dessert like yoghurt at the end because it guarantees that at least some solid calories go into her cleanly.
While I, or my wife is spoon feeding her yoghurt, the other tries pick up the thick of the food that was chucked during dinner and clear the tablecloth.
Then once dinner time is officially finished, the Cheeky Wipes come out to clean her hands and face.
We load what we can into the dishwasher, let the dog back in (who kindly attempts to sweep the floor for us), and then I finish off the floor with Flash wipes.
So, How Do You Stop a Baby Throwing Food?
The real answer? I have no idea. Sorry! I think it’s just something they eventually grow out of.
It’s a natural sensory phase where they are figuring out gravity, textures, and cause-and-effect.
But while you wait for that stage to pass, you don’t have to spend every night on your hands and knees scrubbing carpet.
Bring your baby directly to the family table, cover the surface with a wipe-clean table cloth, serve food piece-by-piece, and if you have a dog to mop up the stray bits, accept the help!