Is it bad to sing nursery rhymes whilst feeding baby meals?

[Tortoiseandhare89]

My 12mo is a bit picky with food. He’s also been a distractible breastfeeder and is the same with solids now. We’ve done mainly BLW with solids with a bit of spoon feeding. He can start off a meal well, but after a while he seems to get bored and just throws his food. I know this can be normal but I don’t think he does it because he’s full as if I start singing or entertaining him whilst spoon feeding, he’ll polish off the rest of his meal. I know it’s bad to feed kids in front of the TV as they’re more passive and less in tune with their bodies, but is singing and entertaining them at the table just as bad?

I think face to face human interaction at the table, not including singing, is lovely. Perhaps later on you’ll have to explain table manners when out and about but for a baby I don’t see anything wrong with it.

I think its fine he's a baby meal times should be fun.

As long as you're sure he isn't full, I think it's absolutely fine.

I don’t think it’s “bad” - strange catch all judgemental term for something that sounds really lovely.

However, I’d do wonder why you don’t think your baby is throwing the food because they are no longer interested in eating - i.e. because they are full.

babies are very good at recognizing satiety- much better than adults! Perhaps your child is easier to spoon feed when they are otherwise distracted by you singing - but that may mean that they aren’t truly hungry for those mouthfuls.

but then we don’t have all the information, and perhaps you have a specific reason to feel your child needs to eat more.

But no, singing nursery rhymes isn’t “bad” - lovely bonding time.

Try not to worry so much.

@LazJaz I guess I worry that he’s actually full and I’m just distracting him but I’ve been assuming he’s not full as he’s willingly eating from me spoon feeding. I stop when he starts turning his head away from the spoon. Does food throwing always mean baby is full?

My baby is 13 months and recently went through a phase of food throwing. It didn't mean he was full-normally after I'd picked it up for the third time he'd eat. I found it helpful to only give him one thing at a time and also to put the item in a bowl rather than straight onto the high chair. Also not to react when he threw the food (my other kids used to laugh or i would tell him not to do it-better to ignore I think).

I meant “including singing”… don’t know where the ‘not’ came in

@Tortoiseandhare89 for us the answer to this questions was “kind of” - and of course all children are different. I can only share what was true for our child.
babies like to experiment and learn. food isn’t yet necessarily understood as simply “food” at such a young age, there are many things that the baby is interested in “What is this? What does it taste like? How far will it fly if I fling it? Will it go splat? Do I now want to feel the texture in my mouth” etc.

So throwing, squishing, other playing is all part of it really. We did BLW pretty well exclusively (I can remember spoon feeding DC on maybe 3 occasions in his life) and the mess because of the joy of squishing and flinging was considerable for a (long) while.

at 12 months your baby has already had approx 6 months to get used to different ways of eating - especially if you have been primarily doing BLW as you state. They are probably reasonably skilled at putting food in their mouth and possibly even using a spoon. The more practice they get the better they will get at these skills

with mine, I came in time to realise that when there was more flinging than there was eating then the meal was over. I was quite indulgent for a while and put things back on the plate again and again only to have it dropped/flung etc. When I twigged this pattern I didn’t allow such a lot of the flinging. When it started, I removed the meal and that was all. If baby started making it clear that they wanted more (signing, whining, pointing etc) I would have course provide more.

Through all this my baby loved to have songs sung and stories read etc. But I didn’t use them to help him eat more food per day as I felt it was my job to serve the food and his job to eat it (or not- he might not have been hungry, the food might not have been to his taste) we still use this mantra now, and it works well for us. He is a preschooler with fairly typical tastes but he eats a reasonable amount of fruit and veg, and when hungry will happily try things in restaurants that some adults wouldn’t be interested in.

kids eat in colour and solid starts on instagram have been really helpful to us.

but do try not to worry. Not only is your baby having lovely food he has a lovely mum who also wants to sing to him and make him happy 💙