Getting Kids to Stay Seated During Mealtime

Tableware for Table Wars

Still trying to get your kid interested in meal time? Check out the fun with the Constructive Eating Utensils Set. The set includes one fork lift fork, one front loader spoon, and one bulldozer pusher. The thick handles and non-slip grips help little hands load food into their mouths, and playing with them buys me an extra five to ten minutes to eat my own vaguely lukewarm food at the dinner table.

The pieces clean up easily, with no cracks or crevices to collect food or other gook. They go in the dishwasher, assuming your little one can wait for the end of the cycle to use them again. Our sets have held up remarkably well to wear and bites. We got our three sets at different times, and I can’t tell the oldest set from the newest or the secondhand ones we scored because they all look the same.

We have three sets of the utensils, one for each kid. They don’t use them every meal anymore, mostly because I store them in a different drawer and they tend to forget about them now. We also have two of the plates you can buy to go with it, but I don’t love the plates as much. The plates don’t stack easily in the cabinet and my kids care less about them. I recommend buying the utensils separately and using them with other plastic plates.

If your kid prefers other types of vehicles, you can also check out these airplane spoons. But if you think the construction utensils take up lots of real estate in your silverware drawer, the airplanes need their own drawer for a hangar. They can’t fit into a silverware drawer divider. The construction ones fit in the extra box above (or below depending on orientation) the slots for regular spoons, forks, and knives, though they don’t leave much room for anything else.