16 month old DD not consistently self-feeding with spoon

[MumazAZ09]

DD has just turned 16 months and is getting pretty good at feeding herself with a spoon. However, she often gets frustrated because food falls off the spoon, and then she starts picking handfuls of food up with her fingers. To be honest, I'm not at all bothered by this: when she starts using her fingers, I just give her a few moments to get over her frustration and then try to offer her the spoon again when she's calmed down. I also make a big fuss of her and tell her how clever she is when she uses the spoon herself. I figure she's still getting a lot of practice with her cutlery skills, which are coming on nicely.

However, my mother (who looks after DD some days when I'm at work) has been making it a big deal for a while that DD has to self-feed every mouthful with the spoon. If DD starts using her fingers, she says "NO! We DON'T do that!" and takes the food out of her hands.

I'm starting to feel guilty and anxious about mealtimes because I haven't managed to achieve 100 per cent spoon-feeding with DD - I started getting stressed out about an hour before she's due to eat. Can anyone reassure me that I'm not damaging her development by taking a laidback approach?

As someone whose child has a food aversion please tell your DM to back the hell away!!
Your child is happily feeding herself but eventually it be just be too stressful and she won't.

She's doing fab and making sure the food gets in her mouth. That's what counts.

At 16 months I'd leave her to it. I started getting a bit stricter about cutlery around 3, much stricter by 4 but I know loads of 9/10 year olds that mostly eat with their fingers and they seem to survive just fine.

Mine are 7 and 5 and sometimes regress to fingers if they're tired and think I won't notice Your mum needs to relax. A lot.

Your DD is normal, she sounds like she's doing really well with self feeding.
I feel sorry for her though because your mum sounds bloody mean

Bless you all, thank you for the comments! You're all right - I'm going to have to toughen up and take a stand on this. I've always had issues with anxiety, including around food, and I don't want DD to end up the same way.

P.S. I'm managed to postpone the potty-training conversation so far, but we've already had the "no, I'm not sleep-training my baby at four weeks old" conversation and the "I don't think DD will turn into a wimp if I give her a hug if she cries when she falls over and, anyway, she's only ten months old so I think she's entitled to be a wimp" conversation. I agree that people just had some weird ideas about child-rearing in the 70s and 80s!

Jesus please don't let your mum have on her own she doesn't sound baby friendly at all.

'Has mum started making noises about potty training yet? Apparently we were all fully trained by 18 months in the 1970s & 80s!'

I had this line, too!

My son is nearly three and not always 100% with a spoon. We try and eat as a family 4-5 nights a week and I ensure that his father and I set an example by using our cutlery correctly but at that age I would rather he be shovelling in fistfuls of peas and actually eating veg than using his cutlery perfectly. I'm learning to pick my battles!

I bought my DCs up in the 80s eldest born in 1980 and I never did any of these strange things that you all seem to think we did.

All my children were fully BF on demand and weaning didn't start until they were at least 6 month. I never made an issue over eating, weaning or using utensils, and potty training wasn't even properly started at 18 months let alone completed. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one.

I see the way my youngest DD is with her DC and she pretty much does what I did. I sometimes think I was bringing my DCs up on a different planet from all the 80s mothers I read about on MN. Perhaps I was but I don't think it's a generational thing so much as an attitude to child rearing thing.

Yes, fair point, pigsDOfly - sorry about that. To be honest, I just feel a bit weird saying anything that might be construed as critical of the way I was brought up, so it just feels easier to say "hey, it was a different era, people did things differently then".

Tbh MumazAZ,, I think there probably was a different approach by a lot of people, in that they probably followed a lot of what their own mothers did.

I knew nothing about children when I had mine so I read a great deal, - lot of stuff from USA written by people who were probably a bit before their time - and then made up my own mind how I would do things.

People can be so nasty on here - not saying you're one - about older women and how they badly they did everything, child rearing, relationships etc, I just wanted to make the point that we weren't all stereotypical previous generation mothers.

My DS is also 16 months and I tend to feed him myself if it requires a spoon.

He can do it but prefers to use it as a kind of catapult to launch his food - and he's so sodding quick I can't stop him and he thinks it's hilarious as does his older brother.

But if he has it in his fingers, he eats really nicely. At the end of a long day at work, I choose the easiest path and leave him to it without a spoon or fork in sight.

pigsDOfly

I think Mums who did things your way were unusual to be fair.

My first was born in 1997 and even then "official" ways of doing things were different than they are now.
Solids were generally given at 4 months, but like you I read a lot ( again stuff from the USA) and information about 6 months was available, but not widespread.

Same with controlled crying, smacking etc.

OMG this gives me the absolute rage! (yeah I know!)

1. She is still very young for developing fine motor skills, no way should a 16 mth old be expected to eat perfectly from a spoon.

2. Being weird about food leads to eating problems and anxiety around food later in life. (not meaning to be rude but do you think your own anxiety might stem from your mothers attitude?)

3. Kids are supposed to be given the space to develop this kind of skill without anxiety and stress surrounding it.

And IMO one of the most important points, that drives me mad in this country.....

4. A vast swathe of the world DO NOT USE CUTLERY OFTEN. In many other countries it is normal to eat with your hands. TBH I think this weird western obsession with eating "correctly" is just odd. Hands, chopsticks and spoons are the most common eating impliments, nothing else is technically needed unless you eat lots of spaghetti!

My mum used to feed dds it is a making a mess thing mum couldn't stand it and she was really impatient with how long toddlers take to eat. There is no solution sadly your mum is not going to let your dd feed herself till she is at least 5

I think I can understand why you have anxiety issues around food...

Your daughter will get there in her own time. My almost three year old still eats with her hands a lot of the time. She's not a good eater and is quite small so we are just happy that some food goes in, regardless of the delivery method!

Btw most babies can't spoon feed at 16 months it is usually a combo of hands and spoons and help

Cailleach. Were people still smacking then, I don't remember. tbh. My DCs always said I talked them into submission - I was always explaining at great length why we didn't do something or other, probably liked the sound of my own voice :).

Never did controlled crying either, couldn't bear to listen to a child cry and tended to co-sleep, which is something that, I think has now gone out of fashion as being considered dangerous.

I did however, sleep my DCs on their backs, as we were advised at the time, although now, I know, that's a complete no-no.

I think there was a lot of 'this is the only way to do things' from the 'experts' at the time and a great many mothers accepted that the 'experts' knew best.

Never thought of myself as a rebel before.

*slept them on their fronts, that should be.

I know lots of others have already commented similarly but my DS is 2 and can use a spoon and fork but still often uses his hands. He was nearly always using his hands until we had his HV development check (after 2 years old) and she asked if he used a fork so we paid a bit more attention to making sure he had tools at all meals and now he uses them more.

Recently we were at a cafe and he was eating peas with his fingers individually so I gave him a teaspoon. He then carefully picked up an individual pea to balance on the spoon and carefully transferred it to his mouth -painful!

I'd be grateful if my almost 3yo fed himself at all - even with fingers. Last week he sat there with his mouth wide open and then said irritatedly 'Mummy, my mouth is open and i am waiting for you to put food in it!'. DS1 is almost five and doesn't use cutlery yet.