Posted on: Tuesday, March 29, 2005

PARENT POWER
Curious toddler plays with his chewed food

By John Rosemond

Q. Our 20-month-old son has developed a bad habit of spitting out bites of food.

The first time it happened, I had set a cup on his tray while he was still chewing a bite of food. He removed the food from his mouth, set it on his tray, and then took a drink. I thought nothing of it, but it's gotten progressively worse since then. Sometimes he chews a bite of food for a while, takes it out of his mouth, puts it on his tray, and takes a bite of something else. Then he puts the half-chewed bite back in his mouth and begins chewing on it again. If I catch him before he spits out a bite, I can sometimes coax him into chewing and swallowing. We have tried only giving him one bite at a time once the prior bite is swallowed, but this is frustrating for all of us. What can we do to teach him to eat properly?

A. Like many parents, you tend to pay so much attention to the details of your son's behavior that you don't see a bigger picture.

At this age, a child is prone to experimenting with the "stuff" of the world, and what you are describing is simply one such experiment. To you, your son's behavior appears odd (alarming?) only because you can't remember what the world was like when you were his age. So you are concerned that your son may be developing a bad habit when he's simply engaged in a very innocent and playful process that involves curiosity, discovery, and creativity. The food grows his body, and playing with his food grows his brain.

Your son wonders what happens to food when he chews it, and the way to answer the question is to remove it from his mouth. By chewing one thing, then another, he's playing with different tastes and combination of tastes. At the age of 20 months, he's discovering how to make the simple, necessary act of eating something not just enjoyable, but adventurous. How wonderful!

This is no big deal, but if you make a big deal of it, if you focus a lot of attention on this issue, if you try to micromanage how he eats (you have already started down this road, in fact), then what is harmless play may turn into something more serious. Food may become the focal point of a power struggle between you and him. Instead of regarding food as an adventure, he may become a picky eater, a food neurotic instead of a gourmand.

This is not the time to be correcting your son's table manners. Left alone (and I mean completely alone), this will probably run its course before his third birthday, by which time he will be trying to imitate your behavior at the table. If it hasn't run its course by then, begin gently correcting him. In the meantime, if you just can't stand watching him chew and remove and replace and chew and remove and so on, then feed him separately, away from the table — out of sight, out of mind.

John Rosemond is a family psychologist. Questions of general interest may be sent to him at Affirmative Parenting, 1020 East 86th Street, Suite 26B, Indianapolis, IN 46240 and at www.rosemond.com/.