If you were eating the cat food Dozy, then the baby would be interested in what you were doing and want to join in
BLW is on the basis that if the baby has lost the tongue thrust reflex, can sit unaided and can get food from the table to their mouth and be able to get it to the back of their mouth and swallow...then they are ready to be weaned. Babies that spit food back at you, or who have to be propped up aren't ready. The premise being that mother nature has kind of got it sussed
right, I hope I can do this extract without infringing copyright...i think it's OK. So, from BLW by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett.
""The Trouble With Spoonfeeding
Imagine you are six months old. You enjoy copying whatever you see your family doing and you want to grab the things they are handling to find out what they are. As you watch your parents eating, you're fascinated by the smells shapes and colours. you don't understand that they are eating because they are hungry; you simply want to have a go at what they are doing - that's how you learn. but instead of allowing you to join in, your parents insist on putting something mushy into your mouth with a spoon. The mush is always the same consistency, but the taste seems to vary: sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's not. Your parents might let you see it, but they rarely let you touch it. At times they seem to be in a hurry; at other times you have to wait for the next mouthful. When you spit the food out because you weren't expecting it (or even just to see what it looks like) they scrape it up as quickly as they can and poke it back in again! You haven't yet learnt that this mush can fill your tummy so if you're hungry you'll probably feel frustrated because what you want is a milk feed. Maybe if you're not too hungry you'll go along with it. But you are still curious about what everybody else is doing and would rather be allowed to do the same.""
Food for thought?????
I'm not that much of an evangelist about it, just the lack of preparation (making up batches of cubes I found tedious in the extreme), other than making sure the bits are not too big to handle or too small to be swallowed whole suits my slack parenting style . I bought the book mainly to compare to what I just did naturally with DD. It's a pretty interesting read though.