The thing is, I do not want to battle my child about food. I don't want to be a "clean your plate" / "take 3 more bites" / "finish your vegetables or you won't get dessert" kind of mom. I want to give her as much autonomy over eating as I can because the philosophy of deciding when/what will be offered and letting the kid decide what/how much they eat makes a lot of sense to me. I want us to eat as a family. I want to put food on her tray and she can eat what she wants until she is full and then not eat more and that's fine. I want to trust that over a week, if not at each individual meal, she'll eat enough and it isn't something I have to micromanage.

But I don't know how to do that and it is driving us all crazy. My LO is 12 mo and she is obsessed with throwing her food. And it isn't because she isn't hungry (she wants more food after she throws what she had). And it isn't because she doesn't like what I offer (she does throw it slightly less if it is a favorite, like berries, but she still throws those too). If I put a handful of food on her tray, or god forbid her whole portion of food, she eats like 4 bites then sweeps all the food off her tray onto the floor. Then reaches out to me for more food. If I put it in a bowl for her she takes handfuls and throws them on the floor.

The best I can do is give her 1-2 pieces of food at a time. I have to wait until she is done chewing/swallowing the last thing before I offer her the next piece (but if I'm too slow she starts hitting her tray angrily and reaching to me for more). If I offer it too soon she picks it up and throws it over the side of her tray.

I have no earthly idea how to handle this. I feel like 12 mo is way too young (and her in particular, I think her receptive language is not that great) for me to enact something like "if you throw your food dinner is done and you don't get anymore." Especially because eating solids is SO new for her and I do want to encourage her to eat/enjoy meal time. She understands the word "no" so my husband and I try to say "no" when it looks like (or she actually) throws food. Sometimes she stops. Sometimes she just starts bawling because she hates when I tell her no.

So right now meal and snack times suck. I'm trying to encourage her to eat more food so that she will take less formula and we can get her switched off of bottles. But eating together is almost impossible because either my husband or I (or both) spend the whole time managing her food giving her 1 bite at a time and constantly telling her "no" when she drops food and then saying "yay good job!" when she actually eats because it seems like we should balance the negativity with praise for what we want her to do. But I hate that too because I don't want her to just think eating = good / I should do as much of that as possible. I want eating to be judgment free. Eat til you're full. Eat what you want. Mom isn't going to micromanage it. But I have to be the ultimate micromanager giving her 1 bite at a time and deciding what she gets next and commenting on almost every bite. Bah.

Any advice?