Any ideas to encourage self feeding please?

[WriggleJiggle]

My dd (9 months) only puts her hands in her mouth, no toys, no food... Apart from continuing to put food in front of her and also including her in mealtimes so she sees us eating, is there anything I can do to encourage her to have a go at self feeding.

She adores food and will happily 'have a go' at anything that is held for her, so its not an 'eating' thing iyswim. She also maniplates toys well with her hands, so its not a 'holding' thing.

I'm happy to continue holding food for her to eat and don't want to force the issue if she's not ready for it. But I would like to gently encourage ...

Could you put her in her highcahir at a communcal meal with some tucker on her chair and ignore her (ever so nicely ) - see if she gets the hang of it with a modicom of starvation??
DD2 also likes a choice - we always put a few diff things out for her ...

Got a feeling she might just scream if she thought she might be missing out on food. Will try it when she's not too hungry and see what happens.

What about putting the food in her hand closing her fingers around it then putting it in her mouth (bread sticks, carrot sticks etc) don't put anything in directly yourself. Lots of 'wow' and 'good girl' and praise will get her going when she sees your reaction.

Not sure if this will help you it may be what you are already doing, but we sit at the table together we eat quite early and I used to feed dd her food at the same time as we were eating but also give her bit of food to eat in a bowl on her tray, usually the same as us(depending on what we were eating) bit of vegtable, bread, potato pasta etc.

Its quite messy but she got the hang of it and now eats really well

you sound really relaxed about it, Im sure she will get the hang of it soon

Thanks all, will keep on trying ...