How can I get her to eat more finger foods?

[ThePetiteMummy]

Dd is 9.5 months old, and the only finger foods she'll eat are toast with unsalted butter, and rice cakes. She will also eat those Organix rusks (no sugar) and the sweetcorn puffs.

I'd really prefer her to eat more healthy snacks than the last two, but so far she's refused carrot batons (steamed), cucumber, bread, cheese, banana, blueberries, apple slices. She won't even put them to her mouth (except the cheese, which she took one lick of and pulled a face!). She still has 3 bf per day.

Any ideas how I can get her interested? She did eat a tiny bit of homemade fish finger today. I'm sure someone will tell me I should have done BLW, but I'm not big on mess! She's actually fine with lumps, I can get her to eat pasta shells with sauce quite happily. She will generally only eat from the spoon if she's got something in her hands to fiddle with, so this must mean she'd rather feed herself? I get the impression she's really not that interested in food.

I just want to know this situation will get better!

My twin 17 month olds still object to lumps of any kind in their food but will happily eat well known golden arches take away (slummy mummy), who knows, lets just hope theyre not on Fussy Eaters in 20 years time!

For some children it takes time. (my dd1 was most reluctant to eat any finger foods at all until she was past 1 year).

Just keep offering small portions of different things. Vary what she will eat; e.g. try a bit of cheese or jam on the buttered toast? If you pressure her it may well put her off entirely.

Some dcs are less interested in food than others.

Perhaps she would eat pasta shells either without sauce or with a small amount of sauce using her fingers? You will have to accept some mess obviously, but perhaps a bit of pesto and pasta rather than a full portion of spaghetti bolognese would be easier for you to cope with?

My advice - chill out. Of course it will get better - how many 3 year olds do you know who don't eat proper food?

She's only 9 months. Food is fun until they're 1. Keep with the BF and just give her a variety of things to play with/try etc let her take things off of your plate that she wants to try.

Thanks Lollipop, I'll give those ideas a try. I promise I'm not a clean freak or anything, just prefer it doesn't get smeared too far!

You're right Gravepenguin, I guess they get there eventually! I must admit I was quite a difficult child to feed, but will now eat most foods.

I shall stop worrying then ChippingIn, just wanted reassurance really! I think I just worry because she's on the small side (between 2nd and 9th centiles), & some days it seems she barely eats a thing. I do think sometimes she doesn't even realise what I put in front of her is food! On the other hand, she was happily chewing on a piece of candle wax earlier which she'd picked off a candle, so there you go!

It just always feels like everyone else's babies are eating fine, and yours is the only difficult one!

TPM - it's a good time to realise they will all do different things at different times and none of them mean a thing!

(Any medical issues/special needs aside)

They will all rolling over, sitting up, sitting unassisted, walking, talking and eating by the time they start school at 4.

There is a huge range of 'normal' for all of those. If you relax and accept that you will enjoy her baby/toddler years so much more - worrying over milestones will make you unhappy when you have no need to be.

She's not being difficult, she's being a baby, babies drink milk - the rest of it should be 'fun till she's 1'.

Thanks ChippingIn, I promise to stop worrying! I don't worry about when she's reaching other milestones, so I suppose I just need to see eating as another skill that varies like everything else.

I must say, I have thought in the past that they all end up doing everything eventually, like you say. And you're right to pick up on my use of the word 'difficult', that is a bit unfair on poor dd!

I hope you can stop worrying. Feeding a baby/child can get so emotional, you are hardwired to maintain their existance and feeding is such a big part of that. The thing is, it's rare that a baby/child will starve itself and we 'train' the 'eat when hungry/stop when full' out of them and set them up with issues for life when we don't listen to them :( So my advice is to start now, don't make food and issue, make it available, make it good healthy nice food and let them choose if they eat it or not. Otherwise you stand to give them issues and make you own life miserable worrying about it and trying to find ways to get them to eat and at the end of the day, if you just let them get on with it, they'll be just fine - better off in fact. It's just a hard place to allow yourself to get to :)

Try mini home made burgers or sugar free banana cake. At got my friends dd interested in finger foods. You can sneak the veggies into most savouries that chidren like.

Roasted sweet potato wedges worked a treat for broadening our DS's finger food repertoire (which previously included toast, toast and more toast!)

Thanks for those suggestions. We have had some success with banana bread, will try the mini burgers soon! I hadn't thought of sweet potato, def one to try as I really like it, and so far dd seems to like and dislike the same foods as me!

Hello OP! Please try not to worry about it too much, sounds like you're doing a great job. Well done for still BFing her 3 times a day.

FWIW at 9.5 months my 3 (now 7, 4 and 2) were pretty useless at self feeding. In fact ds (now 7) would have happily been spoon fed until he was 3. They get there and all 3 pretty much eat most things now. I did purees simply because I wasn't aware of other options with my firstborn and after that it was what I was used to and liked. It worked well for us.

Thanks Tassisssss! That's good to hear. I think I was also stressing about her eating as I went back to work pt last week, so I wanted to be sure she'd eat well for my mum/dh. And of course she's been fine! She's also just really taken off with crawling, so I guess she's got a lot on her mind!

Update! Today dd fed herself some banana and half a piece of satsuma! Woo!