to not like seeing parents shovel food into the mouths of little babies who clearly aren't hungry

[froglegs]

and then not understand why they are crying

girlstwo
"one of my pet hates is people sprinting around after their crawling/toddling children at playgroups and shovelling food into their mouths."

PMSL

Do people really do that? Nuts.

confud

"I think the thing is that BLW is about not stressing what's going in"

yes, that's what I always thought was the point rather than any kind of obsession with not using spoons.

that's why it worked for me because I have a child with a very small appetite and if I had stressed about what what was going in perhaps I would have been driven to trying to make her eat at the top of a slide.

I've never seen anybody force feed a baby...call me old fashioned but is it frowned upon to feed a baby with a spoon these days

Will give it a go with turkey sandwiches at lunch.

No usualsuspect - only by my DD who completely refused yoghurt the other day Plus when I give her an empty spoon she does a pretty good job of 'feeding' herself imaginary food, as soon as there's something on the spoon it's down the side of the highchair immediately!

ski god yes I see it all the time! we must live in a wierd area or something..

Did not know there was a right and wrong way of weaning a baby! Must be wrong then as I used to spoon it into dd mouth, if I relied on purely BLW she would hadly get any food in (she is not all that keen on food and would rather do something else than eat). From my expereince you cannot force feed a baby, they will not allow you to. In public I would never be one of theose mums who run around after their lo with a spoon, I admit I did at home one or two times(must be turning into my mother). But gave up when food went everywhere!

I know pigletmania! Before reading MN I had no idea I was breaking the rules.

DS used to view a spoon as a projectile weapon so sometimes in order to ensure some food went in rather than on (anything really, me the dog, the TV three rooms away), I would sometimes shovel it in for him.

This is madness, absolute madness arguing over this.

""about the mother - what on earth did she think she was teaching him about food / healthy eating?" - this was in reference to a 5 month old so i can only presume teaching these topics was not a priority!!"

This should be quote of the week! A 5 mo is not exactly going to be making notes in her notebook for future reference, and perhaps one can credit a mother with enough nous to change methods before the child hits her teens? My pet hate are the "bind a rod for your own back" school, the people who think that whatever you do with your baby will result in a never-to-be-changed pattern that predetermines the child's future.

As for me, when I gave ds things of a size he could manage, what he invariably managed to do with it was throw it on the floor. Together with the spoon and any loose tray. Being reasonably patient, I did give him a fair few things to hold and deal with himself (good for my back, with all the bending and picking up), but I also used a spoon, and I may even have been guilty of fire engine noises. What I never did was stress about the method though- maybe that is why I have managed to rear two healthy eaters?

I hardly think ds suffered from having the occasional meal spooned into him: in fact, I have a photo of him at a slightly older age spooning food into the mouth of his 4yo sister and it is clear that they are both hugely enjoying themselves- so he can hardly have been left with negative associations for life.

My 7 month has been introduced to a range of tastes, found them all wanting and chucked them on the floor. She's still fully breast fed and I am entirely confident that she will start eating when she feels the need to. Her older sister was nearly 9 months before she decided that food was possibly a good idea, and never did the tongue thrust thing at all. I weaned her older sister on misguided HV orders at 6 months and had about 8 weeks of spitting everything out again and really not eating anything, but getting me very stressed. I learned from that.

Incidentally, any baby rearing philosophy that says that you HAVE to do this and you HAVE to do and you CANNOT do the other is at best misguided. There are very few absolutes in this malarkey.

I would think that weaning at 13 weeks or before term would be distinctly unwise, but their babies might be fine. On the other hand their guts might fall apart in later life, like a large number of those of us born in the 60s and 70s who were weaned at 6 or 8 weeks. I prefer to hedge my bets on this issue.

Just catching up with this thread - god I sometimes sound like a dick on mn

I didn't mean that the mother I mentioned earlier (spoon-feeding her baby in a casrseat) was consciously 'teaching' her son about 'food / healthy eating' - that would be pretty self-conscious even for a sanctimonious old BLW-er like myself (ahem).

It's interesting though (or maybe no one else thinks so) the kind of messages we give out to our kids about what food is for, enjoyment of eating, trying new things, making choices etc.

Obvs everyone does what suits them - me and my DD loved BLW but perhaps I have a higher tolerance for food on floors / walls / baby than other people?

"I would think that weaning at 13 weeks or before term shock would be distinctly unwise, but their babies might be fine. On the other hand their guts might fall apart in later life, like a large number of those of us born in the 60s and 70s who were weaned at 6 or 8 weeks. I prefer to hedge my bets on this issue."

Wow-

There's nothing like a good old over the top wean early and your child will be doomed type post to ensure that those of us who weaned our DC very early due to guidelines at the time feel truly chastened.

My oldest DC appear to have very fine guts that have thankfully yet to fall apart!

How did we ever manage to feed our children before BLW told us how to ??? I'm surprised the human race hasn't died out tbh

lady- my oldest child is nearly 17 and guidelines even back then were 4-6 months. afaik, guidelines have not suggested weaning at 8 weeks since the early 70s, when they noticed a spike in hospital admissions for GE disease among those weaned super-early.

Duchesse-my oldest is 17 and I'm convinced the advice in the early 1990s was 3 months and up-(not that I'm going to argue ...or google about it ),

also I can see you were referring to babies weaned much earlier in your original post on re reading it-sorry.

I just get a bit aaaaaghrrh (having had several children spread out over the years) when new mums look at me as though I've committed some major attrocity by weaning my oldest DCs around 14 weeks.

My son used to cry if you fed him anything other than milk - no matter what it was. as soon as it was in his mouth he would swallow it so it cant have been that bad my other two would have had me wearing it if they really didnt want it!. Perhaps the baby is picky and the mother just wanted it to have some food that day? not all babies will sit and feed themselves no matter how good your intentions.

well, I have an 18 month old DS who is a great big lump but who would happily never have anything but milk and the occasional rich tea biscuit, piece of meat or red pepper.

He currently won't countenance anything sweet, or bland or squishy or wet or spherical or sticky to name but a few and sometimes he just refuses things because he can. The plate gets tipped onto the floor or the bits of finger food get methodically flicked off the tray onto the waiting cat below.

As we know, their food intake is one of the only areas of control open to a small child or baby and a lot of them like to take full advantage of that.

I have hate hate the idea of force feeding anyone but sometimes I have to force that first spoonful or two into his mouth just so he gets the taste of it and then he will sometimes happily eat, or, if he still doesn't want it, I leave it.

But I don't think it is possible to force feed most babies - they are very very good at not letting you.

Skid, there are special BLW recipes??? I just gave what I ate, again, I thought that was the point!

Morloth, I've just reread your earlier post, it's not "BLW and spoonfeeding" that I don't get, it's "BLW and 'traditional' (if the last 60 years classes as traditional) weaning"

I sat in Pizza Hut today with Baby scrounging my ice-cream, I fed with the spoon! Yoghurts sometimes I just hand over and wait for the mess, usually someone (often Toddler) helps. We don't put the spoon in Baby's mouth though, it's held out so that Baby can take charge of it going in the mouth. Today that didn't happen (not me) and Baby got hurt. I wouldn't want someone in charge of putting food in my mouth.

I have had a lot of people ready to tell me where I'm going wrong. I've learnt to say the right things.

piglet, my 15 month old is still mostly breastfed, how much should I be giving in solids?

Weaning guidelines hasn't been below 4 months before guidelines came in people did what people did. Before WWII when women stayed at home with the family children were weaned between 9-12 months, when women still wanted to go to work when their men came home formula was invented but it wasn't enough to support a baby and so people started weaning a lot sooner, this meant they couldn't give family food, it had to be pureed. 30 years later formula is a lot better and babies are getting sick from being weaned too early so guidelines are brought in. It started at 4 months but people thought that 12/13/14/15 weeks wasn't that much before... so guidelines changed to 4-6 months, the latest change was to 6 months to take the emphasis off the lower end. Babies don't need food before six months, they can last a lot longer without quite happily.

"Most people don't have any kind of ideological or emotional attachment to spoons. They won't really care that you are not using them with your baby"

For values of "most people" that do not include relatives of an older generation, I agree. But if someone could tell my MIL that she doesn't need to trick my one year old into eating (distract with jingly toy, shove pureed food into mouth with other hand) that would be great. I lose count, on visits, of how many times I say things like 'No, honestly, she'll eat what we eat/she can manage bread/if she's spitting it out it's because she's not hungry not because it's too much effort for her/look, if I was wrong, don't you think I'd have not got her this far this well?

ARGH.

Only read first post so no idea if were still on by the second page

YABU...Youngest mindee is a PITA when it comes to food sometimes! shes a skinny minny to so has to eat! you sometimes have to literally push her cheeks so her mouth opens a tiny bit shove some food in...once she tastes it shell happily eat it herself and wants seconds...its just the first spoonfull or 3!

So YABU on the grounds that you have no idea whats going on with that particular baby

Only read first post so no idea if were still on by the second page

YABU...Youngest mindee is a PITA when it comes to food sometimes! shes a skinny minny to so has to eat! you sometimes have to literally push her cheeks so her mouth opens a tiny bit shove some food in...once she tastes it shell happily eat it herself and wants seconds...its just the first spoonfull or 3!
she will kick up a fuss like no other! but is only because she is in a mood!

So YABU on the grounds that you have no idea whats going on with that particular baby

What the hell is BLW?

Baby Led Weaning

Meaning what?

yes i had to google

I think there is no one more militant than the middle class mother weaning PFB.

I spoonfeed mashed up whatever we've had because I literally do not have time to wait while DD3 messes about with bits of steamed carrot.

She is fine. And makes it very clear when she is not hungry/ had enough.

if the spoon fed babies are crying so much through hunger shouldn't they be given milk?

far easier to introduce food when they aren't all that hungry ime. i think that's what the poster is getting at about 'healthy' eating ie having a healthy attitude to food rather than finding it a distressing and frustrating experience.

oh, and i've never understood why people who apparently don't give a monkeys how a baby is fed get so full of rage on these blw/spoon threads. surely a biscuit will do.