Your Opinion Sought
Internet, I want to know: Should I let Robin play with his food?
Currently he’s leading a troop of plastic dinosaurs through the primordial landscape of his afternoon snack (banana and raisins). The dinosaurs are smooshing the banana, but he’s being careful to lick them off afterwards, and he seems to be admiring the tracks they leave.
On the one hand, it’s messy and it interferes with the project of learning good table manners, so maybe I should make him stop. On the other hand, it’s self-directed and imaginative, and there’s something very charming about his little-boy focus as he creates this intricate play world. You’re only three and a half once, so maybe I should let him enjoy his childhood innocence and not squelch his delight in this creative endeavor.
I’m genuinely torn. What’s the right thing to do here? Probably I should try to redirect him into a more appropriate activity (using playdough with the dinosaurs, maybe, instead of banana?) but then I’d have to make some playdough and it would take a while. And he just got the dinosaurs today.
Update: Never mind, Internet. In the end I let Robin play with his food for exactly as long as it took him to come up with the bright idea of fetching his trains and running them through the mashed banana. Now he is playing with his dinosaurs in the bath, I am cleaning up the table, and I am planning to stick to a food-is-strictly-for-eating policy for the forseeable future. On reflection I think it unlikely that this will crush his budding artistic spirit. But I’m still interested in how other parents, and maybe especially the grandparents, would’ve handled this situation!
Update the Second: Wow, as I was clearing the table of Robin’s mashed banana, Davy (who had been happily observing the show from his high chair) began issuing an increasingly urgent series of hoots as the banana migrated closer to him, and when I picked it up for disposal he let out an earsplitting wail. He didn’t use a single word but I don’t think the message GIVE ME THAT BANANA could possibly have been communicated with more clarity. (I gave him the banana. He dropped most of it on the floor, but he seems satisfied with the banana flavor he was able to lick off his fingers.)
December 27th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Let him play. Nourish his imagination.
Nonna
December 27th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for the feedback! Maybe I’ll let him have another food-play session sometime soon. Especially if there’s some way to mark off these times (with bibs? by eating at a different location?) as “special,” so that he knows it’s not the ordinarily appropriate table activity.
December 27th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Maybe it’s time to introduce Bean Dirt.
December 27th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I am unreasonably worried about beans up nostrils. Jesse had an Incident of a pea up his nose that featured my father trying to suck it out with a straw, and I don’t think I ever quite got over that.
December 28th, 2010 at 9:52 am
“On reflection I think it unlikely that this will crush his budding artistic spirit”
:)))
I never thought 6 years ago (ah hum, we decided 5 + yrs years ago to ‘try’) I would ever think about this kind of stuff. And now I do. ALL THE TIME. And have no regrets what so ever 🙂
We let our Robin (3 months short of 5) play and it was fine and he no longer really makes a mess playing with food (mess being ‘big clean up job for me’). Daniel’s nearly 3 and a different story. He’s into water so always always always dunking stuff into his water glass and making pastes. We usually let him go until the mess is too inconvenient (he whines for more water or the 2nd glass has capsized) and then ask (tell) him to wash his hands and go play elsewhere.
We currently have family visiting with a 2.5 and 4 month old. The dad’s body gets very riled up at the site of playing with food so they don’t really allow their kid to play with food. They are totally fine with other stuff so I just figure everybody’s different.
Luckily we all agree that it makes no sense for kids to sit at the table while we eat (this was mandatory when I grew up) and none of us force kids to eat anything.
December 28th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Fascinating!
We do have Robin at the table with us, but he doesn’t have to stay after he’s finished eating. We don’t force him to eat anything either, but I do have a “no substitutions” policy — if he doesn’t like what’s for dinner, he doesn’t have to eat it, but I’m not going to get up and make him a peanut butter sandwich instead.