Learning to eat, bowls, plates, knives, spoons and forks

[izzy199]

Hello,
I am a university student and I am looking into redesigning bowls and cutlery to help a child to self feed as well as reducing mess.

When your child was learning did they find it hard to navigate over the bowl sides?

How easy did your child have some difficulty with the size and shape of the grips of the cutlery? if they did what was wrong with the shape of the cutlery you had brought.

Were you worried about the mess accompanied with learning?

How long did you use the child's cutlery before moving onto the same ones that you do?

Did you buy plain cutlery or would you have considered ones which had characters on?

Thankyou

Just an idea, could you ask some local day nurseries if you could watch their youngest children at a meal time? It might give you better idea of what might be needed. Would also look good if you could provide evidence of that kind of research. It might help you to determine the needs of children at various stages of their development.
All I can offer, and my experience is awhile ago, is that cutlery should be comfortable, light and easy to handle. Plates should be designed to keep the pushed about food on the plate rather than on the floor. There should be an attractive, child centred design on the bottom of the plate waiting to be seen when the food is gone. Also same for rim of plate and mugs etc. in this respect I would avoid a current favourite in order that your design is viable for a long period. Hopefully, it should appeal to adults as well as children. Also,unbreakable, which goes without saying. Good luck. Hope all goes well.

Thankyou so much, I have been using youtube as this is a short brief and doesn't allow enough time to get to a nursery and have consent etc. The information about the design on the bottom of the plate is really useful aswell as keeping food on the plate rather than the floor, this is just the type of information I needed to hear.
Many thanks

Plates and bowls that don't move about but are easy to clean would be great

I had some with a sucker on the bottom but when you washed it water would somehow get sucked in a be leaking out when I came to use it the next time

Cutlery where the grip is very close to the spoon/fork is good

Ikea cutlery is really popular but I found it too long for them to be able to manoeuvre into their mouth themselves

I found even children's spoons were often too long. Imagine eating with a spoon that's too long. It's tricky!

Thankyou for all your responses they are very helpful

2 year old granddaughter has got a bent spoon and fork which is an excellent idea. However, the fork is for lefthand use only. I imagine this is because we eat with our forks in our left hands and our knives in our right hands but as toddlers don't yet use knives she only needs one piece of cutlery when eating so tends to always use her right hand. She can't actually use this bent fork in her right hand as it would then bend away from her and not towards her. And yes, cutlery handles are far too long for little ones.

Also my DCs used to have bowls with suckers on the bottom which were great. And granddaughter loves bowls with an animal face on the bottom which encourages her to eat so she can then see it.

my ds got on much better with the caring cutlery (with the bend in it)

I hated the mess. He was not good with cutlery and preferred to use his fingers.

Make sure that the spoon is deep enough that things don't fall out really easily. Forks need to have a chance of actually stabbing things. So much toddler cutlery is impossible to use.

Plates and bowls just need to be indestructible.

Instead of conventional spoons and forks, how about thinking a little outside the box? We had some plastic learner chopsticks when our kids were little that were a single piece of plastic with a sort of M shaped bit at the top of the two prongs of the stick that allowed you to squeeze the ends of the sticks together without the need to hold them 'properly' as separate sticks. I'm sure there must be some way of adapting spoons to do something similar - sort of like a pair of tongs that you can put in your mouth. Wouldn't work for yoghurt obviously!
Short of wrapping the child, high chair and everything else within a six foot radius in plastic sheeting, you will never solve the problem of mess with toddler mealtimes. It's all part of the fun. I used to fantasise about a wet room where I could feed mine and then hose them and the furniture down.
Good luck with your project

We love the character cutlery - we've got Moomin ones!

The harder ones for mine to use are the deeper spoons. I've noticed it's better if she has a more shallow spoon otherwise she can't get all the food off

Our best buy when DS was learning to use a spoon was the OXO training plate. The detachable curved ring really helped put food on the spoon, rather than being chased around the plate!

Also had a non slip base which stopped the plate moving around. Much better than the suckers.

One issue that annoys me is when tomato based food stuffs sometimes stain the plastic. Also, if something is not to be used in the microwave they should have a clearer label to show this.

Agree about the tomato staining. Massive issue. I ended up having to buy only red/pink/orange things because any other colour would end up ruined.

I'm on my 2 DC now and I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of weaning aids are over designed and pointless. So keep it simple. It needs to be easy to clean, one solid piece (nothing more annoying than having to disassemble things for the dishwasher) and preferably something that will be needed over a long time, rather than just, say, when they're in the early days of weaning or learning to use a spoon.

The things that I have used consistently that haven't been consigned to the Tupperware drawer of doom are plastic bowls with a good lip and preferably a flat bottom ( like this www.amazon.co.uk/OXO-Tot-4-Piece-Feeding-Green/dp/B0038JE5N8, children need something to push their food against when they learn to feed themselves), some child's cutlery (metal with plastic handles- plastic forks and knives are pointless) and some ikea teaspoons for spoon feeding. We have a couple of plastic spoons too, but they're not really necessary (second time around, you realise their mouth won't disentegrate when touched by a metal spoon ). When they're ready to use a spoon themselves, they'll do it with whatever you give them tbh, although the bent handles ones help for a short while.

If you can design a sucker bowl that actually works, that would be good- my two have never had any problems peeling them off the table and chucking them on the floor
A sticky on, peel off tray or mat would be good.

Honestly, keep it simple and don't design anything that's only needed for a month.