My almost 1 year old hates her Ikea high chair now too. Its such a pain as I loved being able to drag it round the house and feed her while I was doing stuff like the dishes or cooking.
I've been feeding her on the floor when she stands up in her high chair (stoopid me cut the strap off when she was tiney as they were a pain to clean ) but MIL has a booster seat for normal chair that DD sits quite happily in so I'm going to try and get one of those and start having meals up at the table all the time.
Shanti, DS1 was the same from about 12 months. I think he didn't feel part of the family sitting at the table while in his highchair. We bought him a Phil & Ted's Me Too seat which attaches to the table and he loved that. It was more like he was sitting at the table with us. DS2 never actually used a high chair at all - just the Me Too seat.
Now the boys are bigger we have bought them bar stools which actually look almost exactly the same as our dining chairs, but higher. They sit in those at the table and it works really well.
Winter - i know what you mean about the straps.... we too never liked to clean ours so took it off as DD wasn't going anywhere at the time..... (we never cut them tho they just slide out if you push hard enough..!) and now they are back on because she is constantly climbing out and scaring us!!!!
We do have a seat that attaches to a chair so yeah we might use that for a change... good idea again - thanks ladies!!!! Why didn't I think of all this?? we got it given as a gift at the baby shower and just put it away as I wanted the Ikea one and DD looked too small for it until now.
Bookmarks