not believing this about preschoolers being unable to chew

[SolidButShamblingUndeadBrass]

Has anyone else heard something to the effect that due to evil chavvy parents who are Selfish and Don't Care, lots of reception-age children can't chew food properly as they have been fed so much slop their jaws haven't developed?
It just sounds implausible to me. I thought the oiks fed their DC Greggs products from 6 weeks old anyway and you need your bloody teeth to get through a steak bake...

I'm also a CC Governor in the North West. I volunteer, give up my time. I do paid work elsewhere, so I don't rely on the CC 'hitting targets' for my income. I agree absolutely with Shongololo. All the CC's in this town are in the deprived areas. Most of the users of them don't live on its doorstep. I used all the facilities when my sons were tiny because its all free and I appreciate a freebie. A lot of the families that CC facilities are aimed at are so used to everything being 'free' to them - benefits, housing, school meals etc etc that they don't appreciate it.
We try and and try to get the targetted families through the door. We even advertised the CC cafe (delicious nutritious food very cheap) round the CC but then all the customers were the more affluent families who came in. And its not that the 'target' families can't afford a nice cheap lunch, they have enough money for other things... (another few threads entirely). If you work in a publicly funded place, that relies on targets to gain its funding; then its very easy to hit your targets, ie classes full, library visited etc etc. What is much more difficult is to fill your classes and library with your target families.
One group I used to go to, was a library morning for mums and toddlers. Every mother there had at least A levels and several were post-graduates. All were on Mat leave from good jobs. At first the CC was only open to people with addresses in the postcodes around the centre. Guess what, no matter what the staff did, it was empty. Then the HV's gave out leaflets to every new mum in the town regardless of location and guess what, it was busy and all the groups and classes were full.
The target families just don't want to come.
As an unpaid Governor its easy to keep an objective view of the place and realise that our targets are not being met by the 'target' families.

HOWEVER if, somewhere in the country there are CC's at full capacity with target families all learning from and using the centre facilties, please pm me and I'll pass on the details to our centre manager, I'm sure she would really appreciate it.

And being a Governor is NOT pulling rank. How else do we say 'I don't work in a CC I, er, wander in there for an evening a few times a year and take an interest in its operation' ???

My 14 month old has never attempted to chew any of her food. We started off with BLW when she was 6 months but that never worked, she was underweight and had to be really encouraged to even drink any milk weather it was breastmilk or formula. She took really well to be being spoon fed, most of her food was homemade but whatever we gave her she didnt mind. Iv never once seen her even try to chew her food.

I've asked the HV for advise and she just said not to worry, she'll chew when she's ready, atleast she's eating and swallowing her food and doesnt throw up.

As for what she eats, anything we eat such as veg omolette (one of the few things that doesnt need to be mashed as its already soft), rice, meat, fish small pieces of cheese sandwiches etc etc. I dont puree her food, its mashed.

I am really worried for her, esp after reading about some of the grown up kids on here but I dont know what else to do. I give her finger foods throughout the day to encourage her to chew but she just bites bit off and swallows it or spits it out. We 'teach' her how to chew by sitting her down with us during mealtimes. Im just hoping HV is right and she'll start chewing when she's ready.

I second what Berry says....was at childrens centre today in South Africa...young kids were so friggin' hungry by the time they get to us they'll eat anything........

I agree that what the kids drink from is important. I learned it the hard way. My DD was mix fed, due to problems BFing. I'd read a lot about the problems with bottles and I was determined that the bottles wouldn't ruin her mouth. I got her on a cup for her formula feeds by 6m and was really proud of it.

Unfortunately the cup my HV suggested was the non spill one. DD is being referred for speech therapy because she can't make many of the sounds.

I'm so angry and upset by this. I was really trying to do the right thing getting her off the bottle :(

I'm reading this thread with intrest and it makes me so sad because... well... I don't know how to articulate it, really. It's like it is a condition (disorder?) born out of a clash of wealth and deprivation. Becase there is enough to eat the kids never get hungry enough to force themselves to learn to chew, and no parent who had the means to provide something (anything) that their child will eat, is going to deny them that nourishment. But when the parents are not aware of the problems that strategy may have they don't take the time to make the effort to work at getting the kids to eat properly.

Wow.

I'm still reeling , actually.

PS I know exactly what you all mean by reaching the target audience, all the activities have attended at our CC have been used by 'middle class' though the CC is in the middle of a council estate in a very deprived area.

Hmmm... DC1 & DC2 used NoSpill Cups until they were 4yo; DS1 never had speech problems and DD was slow but improved without help.

DS2 off of NoSpill cups at 19 months... needed speech therapy at age 4-5.

Obviously it's not the only factor but the people who assessed her said the cup probably caused it

We took DS2 off the no-spill cups precisely because we were afraid that he would damage his teeth. Teeth are fine... but he needed SALT.

I think it best if posters are careful in discussing the chewing problem, and how it links to other things like speech or teeth or jaws -- and who is at fault. Not good to make parents feel bad when many have done the level best and their child still develops some or even many of these problems.

homeboys, i was thinking the same thing. Only 12-13 years ago, HVs were banging the drum for early weaning - solids started by 14-16 weeks, lumps by 6 months, finger foods around 7 or 8 months.

Do you ever feel like you are part of a great social experiment?

Virtually no children are weaned at 6months.

Round here (fairly deprived part of Glasgow) the HVs hope for post 8 weeks.

Since I was told outright that the advice about not eating nuts In pregnancy was an allergy experiment yes, I would not be surprised if it was!

Re chewing and weaning...
Maybe the advice should be purees from 4mths, so lumps are introduced earlier.
Or BLW as usual from 6mths.

Although if you try BLW and it doesn't work for you'll have to skip through purees and get to lumps much more quickly.

Shongololo current information is here
I think we are part of a great social experiment as we can't experiment on babies so information has to be gathered over a long period of time with less certainty IYSWIM.

This is from 2004 so things might have changed a bit, but I suspect what still holds true is that parents aren't generally influenced professional advice or guidelines when it comes to weaning age.

Current advice is to give finger foods alongside purees (if you choose to do purees) from 6 months. And they don't recommend purees from 4 months any more because the gut isn't ready, I don't see the problem with the current advice, although maybe finger foods need to be more prominantly featured.

I think the problem comes from all the non-NHS advice - every single weaning book I picked up started at 4 months, so of course started with purees only. So any mum who knows the advice now is to start from 6 months will follow the same plan but 2 months later - perhaps we should campaign for weaning literature to be updated (Annabel Karmel etc).

BTW - I haven't read about non-spill cups causing speech difficulties before. We have a lidded tommee tippee one, is that ok? It doesn't have a valve.

Sounds like a myth to me too OP. Parents who are Selfish and Don't Care don't bother buying jars of baby food and shovelling it in. My sister and her friends certainly didn't have any truck with bibs and mess and washing spoons. It's too expensive and too much trouble for bottle-proppers.

Where I live we have our own brand of BLW. As soon as babies are able to get their hands round Wotsits and Quavers away they go however old they are, sadly the diet doesn't progress much until school age but it isn't slop.

Interesting thread though.

Homeboys - I think that's a good point. Some people are perhaps still trying to do the weaning gradually, like their mum did or like they did with their older kids. But I don't think that's the whole story, cos by the sounds of it there are parents out there who've never even heard of weaning advice.

These kinds of stories make a complete mockery of those weaning chats from the HV. They are preaching to the converted in so many cases, and I reckon a good proportion of the other parents just completely ignore what they say.

Just a thought but have you ever seen the workout a breastfed baby gives its jaw? I stopped early with my DD and never really got the hang of a decent latch but DS astounded me.

Same with this "window for new tastes", idea, surely breastfed babies have been exposed to them since day one?

(Disclaimer: Mother of autistic DS who refuses 99% of known foods )

The bog standard tommy tippee cup is the one my HV recommended recently, free flow is much better apparently.

DS is still BFing at 13m and I'm hoping he'll not have the same trouble with speech. Tbh though the trouble DD has just made me feel even worse about not exclusively BFing :(

At least both of them weaned brilliantly with food, moved on to lumps quickly with DD and DS virtually had no purée at all. He certainly has a strong jaw

Same here - I got a free one, along with free toothbrush and toothpaste and a Bookbug bag - all at our 3 month check. And all a shocking waste of money IMHO.

What's a non spill cup? are the tommee tippee cheapy ones non spill? Worried me now as that's all I use. Like <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=<a class="break-all" href="http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/3c/d7/a484017b42a0068ad2fe1210.L.jpg&imgrefurl=http://21stcenturymummy.com/2010/01/04/product-of-the-week-tommee-tippee-beaker/&usg=__vLE73vzb_Ffp7Mjjm0qOdsC-8nw=&h=240&w=240&sz=6&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=ocRhq5Zu3l-JXM:&tbnh=137&tbnw=146&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtommee%2Btippee%2Bcup%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1276%26bih%3D591%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=292&vpy=304&dur=125&hovh=192&hovw=192&tx=114&ty=189&oei=tqrATOaMJcOOswaW08CmCA&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0"" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/3c/d7/a484017b42a0068ad2fe1210.L.jpg&imgrefurl=21stcenturymummy.com/2010/01/04/product-of-the-week-tommee-tippee-beaker/&usg=__vLE73vzb_Ffp7Mjjm0qOdsC-8nw=&h=240&w=240&sz=6&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=ocRhq5Zu3l-JXM:&tbnh=137&tbnw=146&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtommee%2Btippee%2Bcup%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1276%26bih%3D591%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=292&vpy=304&dur=125&hovh=192&hovw=192&tx=114&ty=189&oei=tqrATOaMJcOOswaW08CmCA&page=1&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">these

Hang on

So the non spill sippy cups cause speech problems? How?

Yes I use those ones - they are the best.

Don't panic. Those are the ones they recommend. In fact DS was still using one of those for bedtime water when he was nearly 4! They're free flow, but they really don't spill. It beats me why anyone would use a true non spill cup - have you ever tried sucking from one of them?!

Oh gosh I didn't bring up initial feeding choices as an example of how a parent might hinder a baby's speech, far from it! I was just saying that even chavvy lazy types (like me ) have been known to breastfeed and that alone really works the jaw.

DD was barely BF at all, had bottles and a dummy for aaaaages, really forward with speech, fantastic eater, and DS is diabolical so I'm hardly in a position of smuggery.