Welcome to Monday Mornings with Dr. Mona, where each week I answer your questions.

To leave a message call 954-526-2641 and I may pick your question for a future episode.

Let's get to our first caller.

Hi Dr. Mona, this is Lisa and I'm a big fan of your podcast and I absolutely love that you have

opened this up for us to call in and ask questions.

I have an 11 month old who lately has become a big fan of throwing things, whether that's her

pacifier out of her mouth onto the floor or just her food during meals.

Luckily we have two dogs, so the mess isn't a big issue but I just more so want to

discourage this behavior in a productive way.

When it's during meal times I normally say if you throw it on the ground you're done,

is that mean you're done and we're able to move forward like that but I was wondering if you have

any other tips or tricks that we can employ. Thanks again and I appreciate you always.

Lisa, thank you so much for calling in with this question. You are already doing a lot of amazing

things. I love that during the meals you're setting that boundary and saying hey you're throwing food

if you're throwing food that means you're done. Are you all done? Parents often feel like it's a

broken record. I went through that too. Ryan was a food thrower, Ryan threw a lot of items and

you will start to feel like a broken record but you want to stay very calm and consistent with that

boundary. But let's talk about throwing. Throwing is a very normal developmental phase so I don't

want us to look at it completely as a negative. Obviously children are learning a lot of things

through throwing. They're learning about their environment and cause an effect. For example,

they're eating and they throw something on the ground like they're fork. That's cool. How did

it fall? Is what they're thinking. You pick it back up for them and you give it to them and they

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