Eating like a big girl

Dale and I both think it is important for Adelaida to be as independent as possible (within the limitations of her age, of course); however, it is difficult sometimes to remember that she is growing and developing so very quickly, so a skill that is too advanced for her one day she might be able to do perfectly well a week or a month later. I often find myself thinking, "Adelaida can't do that skill, I tried to introduce it to her last week and she didn't get it," when I should be thinking "Adelaida couldn't do that skill last week, but she has developed a lot since then so I will try to introduce her to it again."

Seeing how Adelaida is treated and what she does in school helps me to recognize things that we might attempt at home. Her teachers work with several children her age every day and have training in offering children developmentally appropriate tasks and responsibilities, and they are better able to recognize when a child is ready to attempt a new skill.

One of those skills that I saw Adelaida doing at daycare and that we recently tried at home involves eating.

Adelaida eats at school twice a day, for lunch and snack. Her room has a wonderful little table and adorable little chairs that are exactly the right size for young toddlers, and rather than being strapped into a high chair with a tray in front of her, she sits in a toddler-sized chair (just a few inches off the ground) with no restraints to keep her in the chair and eats her food from a plate on the table.

She has been in that eating environment for three months now, and for the first two-and-a-half months, I joined her at lunch every day and saw how she behaved. At first, she did not stay in the chair. She thought it was fun to stand up/sit down/stand up/sit down and preferred to walk around the table rather than to sit in one place. She also didn't like to eat off the plate -- she would take the food off the plate and put it on the table, then eat the food off the table! After a few weeks of watching the older kids in her class sit in their chairs and eat off their plates, her behavior started to change: she would eat food directly off the plate and she stayed seated for longer periods during lunch.

After two months, she was a pro at eating at the table and was the "older child role model" that she had learned from just a few months earlier. Seeing this, we started giving Adelaida more eating responsibility at home -- we transitioned her from eating food directly off her tray to eating food off a plate placed on her tray to eating food off a plate placed on the table. She was ready to eat like a big girl, but I would never have suspected it if I hadn't seen her eat at school!

Today, we took the final step: Adelaida ate her dinner at a toddler-sized table in our breakfast nook, on a toddler-sized chair that she wasn't strapped into! The chair and table are quite a bit larger than those at her school, so her feet don't touch the ground when she is sitting in her chair at home, and we weren't sure if she would be ready for this or not. The first meal went beautifully -- for about the first half-hour. She ate well and didn't try to get out of the chair, but after a half-hour was twisting quite a bit in the chair. Then she was on the ground -- she had fallen off the side of the chair, back-of-the-head first, with one leg caught between the chair and the table leg. She cried, ate on my lap for a few minutes, then went back into the chair to finish the meal with no additional mishaps (but with Dale telling her frequently, "face forward please").

The table and chair that we are using for this are very special -- they were given to Adelaida by her GG (my Grandma Betty) before Adelaida was born. For the first year, they were really only used as a place to put her toys in the living room -- Adelaida was too small to sit in the chair and too small to stand at the table! This evening, Dale moved the table and one chair into the breakfast nook and set them up next to our table so she could eat with us. Doesn't she look like such a big girl!

This big step in eating made me think back to the various seats we have used for Adelaida to eat over the past year. Here's a progression of her eating venues:

She started eating in a BebePod chair that we placed on top of the table:


We then switched to a hook-on high chair, which I thought (before I actually used it) would be the only high chair we'd ever use. I was wrong!


Next, we got a small high-chair that sits on a regular chair. It has its own tray and is designed as a traveling high chair. At first, Adelaida used this high chair with the tray it came with. This has been a great high chair for Adelaida and will probably be the high chair I start with in the future!


A few months ago, we put Adelaida up to the table so that she was using the same high chair as before, but was eating from the table rather than her tray.


(We still keep the tray handy for the really messy meals!)


Now, Adelaida sits at a small version of a grown-up table. She is growing up so quickly!


When it is time to eat, we tell Adelaida "it is time to eat, go to your chair so we can eat" and she walks over to her chair. She is so obedient! We put her in the chair and she starts the meal. In an effort to give her more responsibility, I'm considering putting something that she uses at the table (like her spoons, or bibs, or plates) in an Adelaida-accessible place (her cabinet, maybe), and having her get that item in preparation for a meal.