Winter demands soup. Especially when the temperature hasn’t crossed the frozen threshold in over a week.
But when you’re feeding a toddler, the idea of serving soup can be terrifying. I’m talking scarier than the monster under your 4-year-old’s bed. Soup is easy to slop, drip, rub, fling, and hurl – all of which toddlers love to do with their food. It seems impossible to satisfy your winter soup craving and also keep your sanity (and your kitchen) intact.
I’m here to tell you that you can have it all! With just a few modifications and some checking of your expectations, you can serve soup to a toddler and live to tell the tale. Thanks to FeedingLittles for inspiring some of these tips, but mostly for giving me the courage to try serving messy foods to tiny humans. Seriously, if you’re not following them on Instagram, you should!
In my experience, there are 4 keys to successfully serving soup to a toddler:
Modify the soup
Soup can take many forms. A chunky beef stew is a very different beast than a butternut squash soup, and each has its own challenges when feeding toddlers.
Chunky soup
I’ve had the most success with chunky soups when I remove a spoonful of the chunks from the soup, chop those into toddler-friendly pieces, and add only a minimal amount of broth. This presentation turns soup into something less soup-like for toddlers, which is usually easier for them to eat. My daughter has a much easier time feeding herself chunks with utensils than liquidy concoctions. It also strikes less terror in my heart (and the dog’s heart) when the spoon gets discarded and she goes in with her hands if we are dealing with chunks. The dog can’t tell me in words how much she fears that spoon fling when it’s a creamy soup, but her eyes communicate loud and clear.
Smooth soup
What happens if there are no chunks to remove in your soup? All hope is not lost. I’ve employed two strategies that work here. The first strategy is to encourage your toddler to drink the creamy soup rather than use a spoon. They can slurp from the bowl like your husband drinks his cereal milk or you can just ladle the soup right into a cup so there is no confusion about how you’d like your toddler to consume it. The other strategy I have used to great success is to tear small pieces of bread and stir the bread chunks into the soup. The bread absorbs the soup and gives the toddler something more substantial to attack with his or her spoon. This second option is my preference, as I’m a fan of tossing bread chunks into my soup because I think it’s just plain tasty.
Protect what you can
Not everything can be protected (we’ll address this fact below). But there is a fair amount that you can do to minimize the damage from serving soup to a toddler. You can protect the toddler herself, the table, the floor, and the surrounding walls. Unless you have a doggie poncho, the four-legged family members are on their own, so we’ll save further mention of our furry friends to the clean-up plan section.
Toddler
Find the biggest bib you have and use it. We have this adorable Minnie Mouse number that doubles as an art smock. Have a bucket at the ready for transport of the bib directly to the washing machine after the meal. Alternatively, if you live in a warmer locale or you have confidence in your furnace, strip the child down to his or her diaper before serving the soup. It must be bath night if you want to employ this strategy.
Table
Cover the area of the table around your soup-eating toddler with something washable. We like silicone placemats, but you can also go to the thrift store and buy a few secondhand tablecloths that you won’t mind getting stained.
Floor
This is super important if you have carpet or a rug under your table, but floor protection certainly can’t hurt if you have a hard-surface floor that’s easier to clean. There are many options you can consider to protect your floors from soup. It can be as easy as laying a few old towels down under your toddler’s chair and the surrounding area. Get a little fancier and use plastic drop cloths. Or go all out and buy a splat mat that you can expect to pretty much take up permanent residence under your kid’s chair. I’m all about using what you have, so we go the old towel route and it works just fine.
Walls
Try to situate your toddler away from walls when you are serving soup. Physical separation is the only strategy that has made any difference to the walls in our house.
Have a clean-up plan
Even though you want to protect what you can on the front end, there is no way you can avoid the mess altogether. Clean-up will be inevitable when you serve soup to a toddler. If you have a plan ready to execute before you place the bowl down in front of your toddler, the inevitable mess that awaits you at the end of the meal will be less intimidating.
Dog
Have you considered a dog? Our good girl has always been our Plan A for mealtime clean-up. If you’re employing canine labor for soup clean-up, make sure that you’re making soups that contain dog-safe ingredients. The big one here is to avoid onions.
Towels
A benefit to using old towels to protect your floors from flying soup is that they can also double as clean-up tools. Use them to wipe any unprotected surfaces that got hit, including the chair, areas of the floor you didn’t think could possibly get messy, and the walls you tried so hard to protect by placing your toddler as far away as possible.
Napkins
I’m a firm believer in cloth napkins for young children at mealtimes. When my oldest was just a wee one, I bought a huge pack of baby washcloths that have been used only as napkins for the last several years. They are soft, cheap, they wash up really nicely, and they are plentiful so you can use as many as you need to get your toddler clean-ish after their soup encounter.
Bath
It’s definitely a best practice to serve soup to a toddler only on bath night. It’s amazing where on a toddler’s body you will find soup after the meal. Ear crevices? Absolutely. Belly button? For sure. I’ve even found soup between my toddler’s toes, despite the dog’s best effort to lick every drop of fallen soup off her body. A full bath is the only way to truly get them clean after a meal of soup.
Expect the mess and join the fun
I am not an embrace the mess type of mom. I do not allow paint of any kind in my house and Play Doh is relegated to the patio only. But I am willing to offer a messy meal occasionally and deal with the aftermath.
Soup can be a great way to get veggies into your kids who might be reluctant to eat them in other forms. I managed to convince my 4-year-old who is on a broccoli strike to eat broccoli cheddar soup by telling him it was the Hulk’s cheese soup. That’s a win in my book, and worth a little extra clean-up.
I encourage you to take pictures of the carnage. These pictures will be great fodder for high school yearbooks and wedding slide shows someday.
If you need a few ideas for soups to serve your toddler, here are a few winners in our house:
Share pictures of your toddlers eating soup on Instagram and tag @sarainseason so I can laugh along with you!