I don't feed many purees to my babies, instead letting them grab squishy or mashed food off my plate while they're learning, so that means I don't end up doing a lot of spoon-feeding. In my experience so far, they end up learning to use a spoon and fork before they're one, which I think is great.
Margaret is now 16 months old and, just like the others, is in a new phase of independence in which she wants control of the bowl of food too.
She will refuse to eat until I give her the whole bowl to scoop from herself. I haven't bothered to have a stand-off with her because, so far, she is not throwing her bowl of food on the floor, so I don't mind at all if she feeds herself.
In fact, this relieves me of a task! Wonderful!
And in a humorous example of how babies are very adaptable and smart: our babysitter does like to spoon feed, so Margaret sits there passively letting herself be fed, while she throws tantrums with me if I don't hand over the spoon and bowl. She knows how different people operate!
That is great! Good for her. I am not spoon feeding Julienne. I haven't done this for the other girls and eating is sometimes the bane of my existance. They have terrible table habits like walking around while eating, etc. All my fault. The third one will be done right.
ReplyDeletePriscilla: Don't be too hard on yourself, I don't think there is one perfect "done right." Families like things a little differently. For example, my not spoon-feeding the babies makes for a lot more messes and some mothers really don't like messes and would rather spoon feed until the child is three years old. That's a preference.
ReplyDeleteAs for walking around with food, I think I nipped that one last year because I finally realized that all those advising how beneficial it was to leave a tray of food for toddlers to nibble from all day must not have had a problem with the trail of crumbs and smeared food left all over the house every single day! But I did care about that, so I instituted a table-only eating rule!