To serve a baby led weaning buffet at my daughters party?

[PignutSalamander]

Dd is turning 1, I am planning to do a buffet based on the very hungry caterpillar. The plan as stands is to set it all up on a trestle table and when it's time to serve it put the legs down and let them at it.
Consideration has obviously been given to making it safe and easy for kids to feed themselves and the first few people I mentioned it to said they thought it was a great idea
I mentioned it to a mum who will be bringing her dd and she said " err! What about germs? How will we stop them taking a bite and dropping it, then another baby eating it?"
I basically feel that they will be spending the whole party sharing toys, touching each other etc and that germs are just going to be shared.
Obviously I will ensure that hands are washed before they eat and have also checked for allergys and warned mums not to put them in there best clothes. Also seperate snacks for adults
So what's the consensus mn? Aibu?

I can just see this little soiree in some hideous Richard Curtis film. Hugh Grant watching as Theo and Oscar regurgitate a twice baked parmesan twist over Emma Thompsons boden skirt

- sorry for being so slow at typing.

Hope you all have a lovely time.

There is nothing you could clean a community hall floor with that would make it even remotely acceptable for babies to eat off of it.

Jesus are you so scathing of people who actually use plates in real life? You know, perhaps the parents will give them bits to eat and not just hand them an entire plate full of food.

It would be much better to do as MrsJay said.

Wasting food in the name of 'fun', when many are going hungry, is just disgusting.

I still don't understand what's wrong with plates

What Chipping said.

I think there's a lack of common sense in the OP's notion.

Actually I'm now thinking the worst part of the whole charade is the fact that you'll need to clean the hall floor before the party. Most of us see the inevitable chore of cleaning up after a children's party as a bit of a drag. Anyone who chooses a party which involves cleaning before AND after obviously has too much time on their hands.

It's going to be a huge fucking mess.

Hths

I opened this wondering what a BLW buffet was exactly, only to discover that my DD is having a BLW buffet for her party this afternoon - better not tell her or the other 9 year olds.
OP I admire the idea, but it is just a regular party tea laid out in a pretty pattern.

agree

its just ostentation about how a kid frigging eats

you will look back and CRINGE

Actually OP - can you please go ahead with this and take pictures - and then post them on here?

ta.

The theme sounds fab to me and i would go with what you had planned in terms of what you offer. However i would keep the table at normal height, provide bowls/boxes whatever and let the parents assist in choosing foods their DC might like. This will still be messy but less fraught with danger than leaving the kids to it. Hope you have fun.

That's it we are officially raising a generation of these

farm6.staticflickr.com/5108/5618524067_1a1778aeb3_z.jpg

I'm skim reading this with my jaw on the floor.

Why the fuck would anyone want to host the human equivalent of a chimp's tea party?

Somebody brought up a great point about table manners. Yep, that'd piss me off too. Yay, let's teach kids that it's normal to squish food about in their fingers and do belly flops onto it at the table.

Sounds great!

"Baby led weaning"

For my dd's 1st birthday we let her and her little buddies have a go at the birthday cake with their hands. It was really funny, they all got a bit sticky but it was no big deal - you can wash children. We also hired a ball pit and some soft play stuff to have in the garden as it was summer. Not at all 'showy offy' to make a big deal of a 1st birthday. At the time I was close to my NCT group so we had 8 babies all more or less the same age and it was lovely seeing them all together at the party.

I think the buffet sounds fun, the fact that you called it a baby led weaning buffet is neither here nor there. As usual just as excuse for the MN bitches to piss on your parade. Some of the comments and ideas for the buffet are really good but there will always be a few miseries who hang around waiting to pounce on someone who doesn't quite measure up their linguistic high expectations.

Just one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet..

I'm off to a one year olds party soon, ds is one of the youngest in our group at 10 months. He would be able to pull himself up using your buffet table...

Assuming he didn't destroy it at that point he would stand holding said table in one hand and make wild sweeping gestures with the other....

Your food would be either splatted or the plate grabbed and chucked. As a parent and guest I would be mortified at him destroying your beautiful buffet ( that's not sarcastic!).

Assuming he managed to stand next to a plate, if he was lucky enough to find the one containing pears he would eat his own body weight.... And have awful wind and the runs for the next week. He isn't old enough to make his own food choices yet as he doesn't understand the link between mouth and nappy!

So I would be the one in the corner balancing ds and plate on lap so I could make sure he wasn't destroying anything,choking on anything or setting himself up for a nappy explosion! I wouldn't be enjoying it..

But the little darlings are just expressing themselves through exploratory play NewandSparklyMe. It would be restricting their emotional development to give them a plate don't ya know?

'Wasting food in the name of 'fun', when many are going hungry, is just disgusting. '

THAT is the nub of the matter, and why the idea is so wrong.

Trust and NCT'er to think its an amazing idea

an

My child would have loved this. But there is no way he would have let any of the other children near the melon. Or the strawberries. Or any sausages. At around 1 ds had a major growth spurt lasting for about 2 months and ate a ridiculous amount.

As long as you watch the salt content it sounds fine.

I personally wouldn't want my baby crawling through food and probably sitting in the middle of it.

Agree that it's just a waste of food and creates a mess.

Do some other kind of messy play, if that's what what you want, but don't use food.

I assume the birthday child is your PFB?

I wouldn't worry about germs but I can't imagine all the mummies being happy to sit on the floor, esp if it will be covered in food. I don't have DC but even if you do BLW, at 12mo aren't parents usually still sitting with the child at mealtimes? I look after friends' children and wouldn't leave a child of that age to do its own thing at mealtimes - even if the child is used to feeding itself I'd always sit with them keeping an eye out for choking, noticing what/how much they eat and generally encouraging them to eat up their meal and not throw food etc.

Could there be some other element of messy play in the party rather than food-smooshing? It is really disgusting to waste food when there are so many children in the world without enough to eat.