Am I the only one who thinks baby led weaning is a stupid idea?

[chocablock]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/14/familyandrelationships

It seems as if everyone is doing BLW apart from me. What happened to the tried and tested traditional mashing up your baby's food and feeding it to them with a spoon? OK maybe let them play around with their own spoon a bit to get into practise but basically make sure they eat the food!!!Is there anyone else who thinks blw is new fangled stupidity? Or am I just a voice in the wildreness and hopelessly old fashioned?? :)

Not really Namdamnyou (love the nn). DD uses a fork and spoon now and likes to have a toddler knife as well. The implements were always there and now she uses them although she started off with her hands.

I think just because the implements are difficult for them to use to begin with. Plus it's in all the books etc that messy play is good for them, so that's a bonus - some nurseries/children's centres put out trays of baked beans or spaghetti (or cornflour + water) for them to play with. It probably isn't something I'd have done with him otherwise.

DS seemed perfectly happy to transition to a fork/spoon for sloppy things, can't really remember when, just when he got used to using one, I think.

Lime juice is a good tip for those adjusting to cooking without salt - a squirt of it brings flavours out in much the same way without the sodium content.

i'd say if you are just letting the baby use a spoon then yes, totally blw-y, zeph. it's a head space, anyway, more than a rigorous method. imo.

re cutlery, i've asked about on my forum and most babies seem to use cutlery quite well and quickly. there is the case to be made that babies watch their parents using cutlery and copy them, which is how they learn to do most things, so the fact that they aren't being spoon fed isn't relevant. regarding spag bol, i use that as shorthand for fusilli ragu, perhaps that's misleading. my kids were useless with noodles and spag for the first wee while, (i think i'd find it hard to stick strings of spag in my mouth, tbh) so we swapped to fusilli/penne/farfalle while they were younger. no great hardship. as for salt, we'd jacked it in prior to having kids (pre-conception diet as were having Some Difficulties) so didn't have it to miss. as an occasional, afaia, it's fine, i think the damage to kidneys is done when salt is more constant.

napdamnyou - i was a bit lazy and let ds2 eat with his hands for quite a while, yes the shepherds pie and spag bol type meals. he didn't really start using a fork / spoon until about 14 or 15 months old and my dm was starting to make 'noises' about him not eating with fork / spoon yet .

but tbh, it was because of laziness on my part! they've got their whole lives to eat with forks / spoons. and i think it's a bit of a learning curve to eat with their hands and fingers for a while. they get to feel the textures, negotiate the hands to their mouths, the different feel of foods. they can tell when it's too warm to eat. it's so multi-sensory, that i wasn't that fussed he wasn't using a fork or spoon that early, he still is a baby to me! tbh now at 20 months old, he prefers to use a fork and spoon and just naturally copied us in time. he's taken it all at his pace and in his way and he's got there fine. it's the no stress part of it all that appeals to me.

DS would eat full length spaghetti quite happily. He found it easy to get handfuls of the long strings to his mouth. And we found it funny to discover that that sucking spaghetti through your lips thing is intuitive, rather than learned behaviour .

We also had no problems with salt, we had given up using it in cooking on a post giving up smoking healthkick years before. But if DS had something with high salt (eg sausages) one day we would make sure he ate low salt food the next. We ensured he ate healthily over the course of a week rather than on a daily basis.

I can recommend Weaning Made Easy by Rana Conway - v sensible, explains how you can get the best of both worlds: blw and trad.

I started off with purée. All went well for a couple of weeks, but after that DD refused to let me put the spoon in her mouth - you can't force a baby to eat. The HV suggested BLW, but DD would get frustrated because she kept missing her mouth. I went back to purée but DD hardly ate anything until she was 8 months.

Now she eats everything. Her appetite pretty much trebled over night when I started giving her more solid food. She can use a spoon, but most of the time will just use her hands. She'll be two soon but I'm not too worried about her lack of soon use.

I know plenty of people who went down the purée road and their children (same age as DD) eat anything and everything.

One mum I know did BLW and she is pretty smug about it. Not really sure what there is to be smug about really.

Just do whatever works and don't worry about silly labels and what everyone else is doing.

Napdamnyou I don't get why british eat foods such as sushi with their hands, it seems a bit counter intuitive, as natives eat it with an implement - chopsticks. You need to get used to the idea of eating sushi (or other east asian food) with chopsticks ...

See where this is getting you? Babies don't have the dexterity to eat with utensils. And if you can't use chopsticks properly (and looking in wagamama I'd say 90% of brits can't), should you not be able to eat a bowl of nice noodle soup or sushi?

My point was meant to be that eating spag sauce or other sloppy stuff with a spoon is EASIER than trying to to eat it with hands...not that it eating within laments is the proper polite way...I probably phrased it poorly. Adults would struggle to eat spaghetti sauce ie mince and tomatoes etc with their hands, or porridge with their hands so not letting babies use loaded spoons seems a bit pointless, the aim being for them to actually get to eat the food instead of wipe it all over themselves.

I have met a BLW person who is dead against spoons in any form and all food has to be picked up by the baby. Even if it is sloppy food.

Think that is a bit harsh on the baby.

Obviously I don't expect babies to use knives and forks.
But a spoon is simply one way of transporting a mouthful of food into the mouth, and fingers are another way of getting food in.

Why eschew the spoon? It's often easier to eat with one.

Within laments = with implements, wretched ipad

not in all cultures, of course. i think you are mixing up culture with capability, tbh. plenty of nations use breads etc to pick up sloppier foods, and their fingers for everything else and think we're a bit weird for being so removed from our food as to insist on sticking it on the end of a spike.

my children were natural moroccans, in that regard, but the culture i live in dictates that i must teach them to use our specific type of cutlery. whether they'd do just as well with their own dextrous fingers and some flatbread is moot, as this is where i live. but it doesn't make me better or finger feeding less easy/worse.

nap - i think the spoon thing is a bit by the by to be honest. i let ds2 play with a spoon, but he preferred to use his fingers initially. so he obviously found it easier that way. it was more important for me to let him choose the food himself, than how it would actually get into his mouth. he could have used a spoon if he wanted or his fingers / hands. he was able to watch how we ate with him and he just experimented and copied. i don't think blw is about being against using spoons, so maybe you just met a bit of an odd one! it's about letting the child choose and eat however they want and however much they want in a much more involved way than being spoon fed.

For my DS2, the first 3 or 4 months it was about play and experimenting. It's brilliant seeing babies who have no concept of mess or whatever, to them it's just a new thing to learn about and touch and taste. And the visible enjoyment is lovely to see.
Then when DS2 got a bit older, he started copying - he started using a spoon and a fork and putting his fork on the plate at the end of the meal and following 'convention' then. It was actually quite liberating to see, in contrast, the earlier stages when he did grab a fistful of spaghetti (and he didn't seem to struggle!) and shove it in. To them it's just a new learning thing and then they learn it tastes nice and they feel full afterwards. But to see that process, without any form of 'culture' is quite refreshing. If that makes sense.

The thing with spoons and BLW is that when they are fed by someone else the food is generally placed too far back in their mouths - it's not the spoon per se.

Cutlery - it really isn't any different for a child who has been BLW'd to a child who has been 'fed' - they all need to learn to use cultery and will all use their hands if given the choice! It's not like 'spoon feds' just take over and start using cutlery nicely - if only!! If anything I'd say BLW's have an easier time of it as they're at least used to guiding the food to their mouths and using their hands to get food there...

Don't be ridiculous! How can you say that people who spoon feed their children generally shove it too far into the backs of their mouths?

I really really don't like it when people veer from one extreme to the other. You're either with them or against them but there can never be no middle ground. There are NO proven benefits to BLW, no studies have shown that children who are fed in this way are any better or use cutlery better than babies who are fed purees or fed with a spoon.

The insinuation that those who choose to feed with a spoon are somehow force feeding or shoving the spoons in too deep is ridiculous. Where is your evidence for that? Or is that just a generalisation?

In reality, traditional weaning involves only helping a LO who wants a spoonfull of something (starting with helping guide spoon into open mouth, until she can do it herself), using lots of finger food, mashing stuff with a fork to make it easier for a baby to eat (assuming you wait till 6 months). I do make some things just for LO, sometimes she has what we have, sometimes we all have a "babified" version - cheddar rather than feta or parmesan, veg cut into batons and cooked for longer, no salt, much less spice, etc. As far as I can make out from folk I know, this is what the overwhelming majority of "traditional" weaning people do. I just don't see the issue.
Where LO's just want to be left to do it all themselves then I don't see why you would then take the spoon from them. Or if they're not that bothered about using spoons and prefer the "hands-on approach" (or hands-in!) then I don't see why you wouldn't just let them.
Maybe my LO is wierd, but she definitely enjoys using spoons - we're using cutlery and she just wants to copy, though she needs help for things to stay on the spoon until is in her mouth (and when we first started, to get the right end of the spoon in her mouth!). In the same way that when she's straining toward the out-of-reach toy she wants to play with I would go get it and move it just within her reach.

I cannot see where the big difference is, nor where the big controversy is.

I'm with Rhubarb too. It is really unimportant.
I also can't see how you get it too far back in the DCs mouth. I think that people make mad generalisations about 'how it used to be' when really they have no idea and everyone was different anyway.

I did BLW with my DS (now 3), no spoonfeeding whatsoever. He started off really well and ate loads of different stuff in gthe first few months, but he has turned into a fussy eater since. Hardly eats any veg, but good with fruit. Wants to eat "seperate" things, and as to be encouraged to try new things or eat things with a sauce in it. we try to be laid back about it like in the early months, but now we do have pressurise him to him eat his dinner as he asks for crackers to fill him up before bed, so for us BLW hasn't turned into toddler-led-weaning sadly. Although today he was stuffing himself with veg lasagne for lunch, so sometimes he does surprise me. He never has an aversion to anything, which is good, but can be un predictable in what he will eat. Oh and he wont use cutlery unless told repeatedly.

My DD, now 15 months, was also BLW in the beginning, but wasn't skilled enough to eat much, so I tried spoon feeding and she refused the spoon too. Basically she didn't eat much till she was a year old. Now I spoonfeed her a bit, and then she refuses the spoon and then feeds herself. She eats a much better variety of foods than DS at the moment. I'm hoping it will stay like that.

What they choose to eat etc has nothing whatever to do with how they are weaned. They are all different. Life would be very simple if you could say ' I will do BLW and they will eat anything'!

exoticfruits - I was just saying that just because you do BLW does not mean that your kid will eat everything! Although the Gill Rapley book does say however, that a BLW child would be less fussy and more willing to try new things. but in my experience, my DS who was fully BLW is defnitely more fussy and less willing to try anything new than most of his spoon fed friends! This is probably his personality more than anything, but BLW wasn't a magic solution in his case anyway.

there's no point in discussing this any more, i think.

were i to start a thread saying 'aibu to think puree-feeding is stupid, it's an old-fashioned idiocy practised by over-bearing, force-feeding neurotics?' i could also ignore the hundreds of perfectly reasonable people who would come on and say 'well, no, it isn't'. that is, after all, what's happening here.

the people who say they don't care about how children are weaned clearly care very deeply, or they would be capable of reading the majority of posts on this thread that respond to an equally insulting and antagonistic OP and see them for what they are... not smug, not extreme, wholly relaxed and un-dogmatic, with acres of middle ground and no axe whatsoever to grind about how anyone else weans their child.

instead they pick up on one or two posts and use them as 'proof' of what they are determined to believe. meh. at least i learned something about the classification of medieval literacy.

at least i learned something about the classification of medieval literacy

Just what you'd expect to learn on a weaning thread!

I think next time I won't do much with purees, just use food that easily smushed on it's own. Mashed potatoes, avocado, banana, etc.

aye, that's what the nhs recommends. food mashed with a fork from six months/finger food from as soon as they can manage it. pretty sure that the weaning age moving to six months must mean the eventual end of the AK puree.