My 11 MO has started climbing out of her highchair at every meal. We
now have the strap set as tight as I feel comfortable setting it and
we also keep the "table" part up against her belly as tightly as I
feel OK doing. Nevertheless, she can get to a standing position in
seconds flat. Very dangerous.

Also very inconvenient. The highchair was a key part of how I coped
when each of my two older kids was an infant and young toddler. I
could get all kinds of stuff done in the kitchen while the baby fed
herself, or even just played in the highchair. It was especially a
lifesaver at dinnertime, when babies/toddlers tend to be cranky and to
want to be held a lot but mom needs to make dinner. I found that the
baby could cope pretty well if she could sit right next to me in the
highchair and nibble on food and/or play.

I feel I need the highchair more than ever with this baby, who is the
most active of my three so far and also, as the third, the most
benignly neglected. Even in our reasonably child-proofed house, this
baby can get into trouble or destroy something shockingly fast. It
helped enormously, until last week, to be able to put her in her
highchair while I concentrated on cooking or, at breakfast-time, while
I concentrated on getting the older two and myself ready to get the
schoolbus. Also, the baby really starts acting hungry about an hour
earlier than the rest of the family is ready to, so if I can't feed
her while making dinner, then she is going to be hungry and cranky. I
have taken to nursing her before going into the kitchen to cook,
which, IMO, is a step back.

She doesn't only climb out when she's done eating -- in fact, she
likes to stand up and reach down for her pieces of food!! Incredibly
adorable, but dangerous! Since she began doing this, she has been
eating a lot less solid food, which I'm not at all pleased about. She
was a great solids eater.

We have tried repeatedly pulling her back into the chair and also
saying NO very sternly. She finds the latter hilarious; the former,
frustrating to the point of shrieking. I imagine it will be about a
year before she will "listen" when we tell her to stop climbing out,
so I need to find a new coping mechanism.

First question: Does this sound problematically odd? That a child at
11 months can't sit still long enough to eat, for God's sake? Is this
a sign of the dreaded ADHD? I mean, my first child was (and still is,
at 8) a very active go-getter, but he never climbed out of his
highchair during a meal and, in general, he was just not *quite* as
destructive or constantly on-the-move as this one.

Second question: To anyone with a baby like this who was too active to
sit and eat (and/or, anyone who *chose* not to use a highchair and
whose baby was very active): How on earth did you manage to get solids
into them?