Keeping food in his mouth

[swd12422]

My 2-year-old has started saving his food in his mouth. He was just having some apple slices, said he was finished and came in to play with me. Next thing I know there's apple "juice" dripping on my head and arm (he was up on my shoulders). I took him down and told him to swallow whatever was in his mouth. He opens his mouth and there's a little wad of chewed up apple fermenting in there!

It's now 20 minutes later and he's still refusing to swallow. I told him no more playing til he's finished with his food.

Why is he doing this? I'm assuming it has to do with control, but isn't this really bad for his teeth? I know I can just not let him play til his mouth is empty, but that's going to get really old really fast too....

Ugh. With so many other buttons he's been pushing, how did he find one even I didn't know about???

[diamond lil]

My 1.5 year old DD does this. Constantly. Just this Saturday, I gave her some nice soft cantaloupe cut up in teeny tiny pieces for breakfast. I put them in a bowl for her to serve herself. She likes walking around the house in the morning with a small bowl of food while I busy myself getting ready. Half of the food she ends up eating, the other half gets fed to the dog.

Anyway, we leave to go shopping an hour or so later. I get her out of the carseat to go in the store, and I can just tell that she has something in her mouth. I tell her to open up, and sure enough, there's some partially chewed cantaloupe in there. It's been in her mouth for over an hour! I ask her if she's gonna finish eating that, and she shakes her head. Then I tell her to spit it out and she shakes her head, so I gave up. She must have swallowed it by lunch time because I checked and it was gone *sigh*

Someone tell me this is normal!

[almadianna]

my daughter did this, we call it "chipmunking".

It stopped on its own, and sometimes still creeps up (she is 3 now). Solution? well we didnt really do anything different except tell that it was not good for her teeth (she is really into clean teeth for some reason).