Lumpy food & speech muscles?!

[daddy21]

D's is 6 months and has been eating pureed veg/fruit for around a month. Parents friend is a HV and she said that babies need to eat lumpy food as soon as poss to ensure the development of their speech muscles AND that when babies eat you shouldnt scrap the misplaced food from around their mouth - as this stops them licking their lips and using the muscles in their tongue which also aids their speech development!! I have NEVER heard this before.... Pls post how you introduced lumpy food - going to mash veg from now on, what kind of beans would be ok to add? Could I add chopped wholegrain pasta to purees to help make lumps!? We have a freezer full of homemade purees we need to use!!

Oh gawd, another loopy HV.

Ignore, daddy21!

My HV told me the same when ds was little. I just pulsed the food rather then liquidised it. or yoghurt with fruit bits through it. or mash a banana or tuna and mayo. or you can get tiny baby pasta.

Never heard that either.

I know my dd really struggled with lumps so I just went from pureeing to mashing. Veg works really well.

You can use your pre-done puree's and add it to some mashed fresh like potato, veg or little bits of soft meat. I introduced stewing meat which worked well. Like Lamb or beef.

I thought I had missed out on some very important knowledge.....BIG sigh of relief....

This is, from what I know, somewhat accurate, at least the bit about lumpy food. But you don't need to be doing lumpy food at 6 months (you don't need to be doing food at all at 6 months!). I think you really just need to be doing lumps by a year or something.

A friend of a friend is a speech therapist, who has been seeing a fair number of two-year-olds or older who only eat purees and crisps. They never push food around their mouths with their tongues, so they have speech problems. I've also heard of this problem from my friendly neighbourhood bfc.

I've never heard the bit about not scraping up food off the face.

For what it's worth, my DS2 never really ate purees, as he didn't like them. Straight onto real food. Today he ate Thai food, and was very enthusiastic about crab claws, and fish cakes. He's 10 months, just.

You can use some purees and some lumpy stuff. Your baby might not yet be ready for lumps, try and see. You can use purees as pasta sauce on pasta - you can just give penne or fusilli and let your baby use that as finger food. It's pretty messy, though.

He could have eg pieces of banana, cooked green beans, cooked bits of potato which he can pick up and aim at his face by himself and get used to lumps that way - I think he would be likely to choke on a lump he wasn't expecting in the middle of a puree?

(Haven't weaned anybody for many years though and was not good at it then )

NQC, it was the not scraping up around the mouth which I thought was loopy btw - they don't lick their lips at this age, do they? Just sit looking messy and surprised!

That bit does sound loopy.

And the AS SOON AS POSSIBLE thing, and the terror about speech muscles. All that sounds loopy in a typical HV way.

Anyway, most people know (I think?) that the sooner you get kids onto something resembling real food, the better. If you keep them on pure mush too long, they don't want anything else, or so I'm told.

Oh, as JanH says, lumps in an otherwise smooth puree may be problematic - lots of puree-fed babies just suck the puree off the spoon. It goes straight to the back of the throat, and if there's a lump in it, voila choking, or at least gagging.

Think we will continue to use purees first then alter consistancy in the future by just mashing....thanks everyone never thought raising a baby would require so much research enjoy every bit though!

Introducing finger foods can make things easier, and they're worth a try as your baby gets better small-muscle control.

If you're thinking of adding some sort of legume, to increase texture/protein, by the way, red lentils are good - they're not too fibrous, and also easy to cook. If you make a dahl with them, they're pretty mushy without any mashing or pureeing.

Much as high-fibre food is good for us, it's a bit hard on a gut that's just learning about solids. (I've even read that you shouldn't give brown rice/pasta/bread ... I tend to ignore that, though)

thanks nqc, have just found a lovely spinach/red lentil dahl recipe for babies

'loopy in a typical HV way'
'another loopy HV'

unfair comments

Actually, daddy21, this rings a bell for me.

I've also just looked it up and there are quite a few references to 'chewing encourages development of speech muscles'.

Try this

Sorry, strugstu - I take it you are one? My HV was wonderful and I know many are - it's just that there was a thread today about another HV tearing someone off a strip because her 4-month-old weighs 12lb2 and "is seriously overweight and should cut a feed out".

The lip-licking thing is silly for a 6 month old though, isn't it? Yes they need to learn to chew and eat foods other than puree as early as is sensible, but parents shouldn't scrape round their mouths with the spoon?

Ah,you're all being a little unfair. There is a lot of sense in what your HV contact has told you,daddy. I am a salt and it is true that we see more and more children with swallowing problems,primarily because they have been fed commercially pureed food for far too long.

Before the advent of baby food manufacturers and cheap home blenders,babies would have progressed onto lumpy food much more quickly.

Also it is important for babies to feel food on their faces-it does help their neurological development. It is common practice to ask an (older) child with weak facial muscles to lick chocolate or some such food off from their lips and mouth area in a salt session.(Would also do thing like blow out candles.)

I am concerned (like many colleagues) at the overriding cleanliness of some people's parenting style. Babies often rarely get a chance to feel and play with food and learn about different tastes and textures if they are put in a high chair,trussed up in a bib,spoon fed and then wiped down instantly.

its true to a certain extent but please don't takee it that if you don't give lumps then speech won't be good, It will help but not stop develpoment if ignored. With your own babies it is about introducing lumps when THEY are ready.

Yes there is some sense in what she said, mizmiz, but what she said was OTT. A 6-month-old doesn't need to go straight on to "lumps" - shouldn't in fact, finger food is a different matter - and is not going to be able to lick its lips at all!

Many mums on MN are not intending to start weaning until 6 months - WHO guidelines I think? - should they give lumpy food straight away?

OK figure this one out

DS1 (now nearly 5yrs old) STILL hates chewing food, will take AGES to chew and swallow something as simple and soft as pasta. One of the things I'm most proud about with him (and something others point out too) is his VERY clear speech,

DS2 - 20 months, and starting to say some words (recognisable only to us) chews for England, and has done since well before he was one. Yet he struggles to say a lot of fairly 'simple' sounds (yes I know he's still young to be talking, but there's a big difference between the sounds that DS1 made at this age and the sounds that DS2 is managing to make....

I would just say that some detail is often lost when a story is being related, Janh!

With my second baby,had the courage to go straight onto roughly mashed banana at the age of 6 months. Within a couple of weeks,he was eating more or less like the rest of the family.
Transition to normal food seemed much quicker than with my first baby.

Yes Queenof Quotes,always exceptions to the rule.(Do you also have a 90 year old grandmother who smokes 60 a day and has never had a cold in her life!?)

oh and I'm now supposed to take you seriously am I???

I wasn't even answering your post - I was simply giving my experiences to daddy21.

And FWIW, no my Grandmother died at the end of last year - at the age of 90 - so please keep my family out of this

I'm off to bed. There is an odd feeling in the air tonight.

well of course there's going to be an 'odd' feeling if you take the P*ss out of someone's post!