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?? :)

I've actually got nothing against BLW- it's the superiority complex of those executing it that makes me want to stick their lightly steamed broccoli floret up their bum.

I also think the purees=fussy kids, BLW=anchovy botherers= bollocks. It's all purely anecdotal, to which I say "My Granddad smoked a pack of woodbines a day and lived to be 90, which categorically proves that smoking isn't bad for you." No? Thought not.

"I've actually got nothing against BLW- it's the superiority complex of those executing it" so if I've weaned one with purees and one DC BLW do I have a superiority complex over myself?

Aitch - they're on this thread!

i really hate all this 'superiority complex' shit. it's utterly bogus and just designed to shut other mothers up. if you feel that people are acting in a snooty manner to you, take it up with them - perhaps they are just snooty people? (or perhaps you are just given to feelings of inadequacy, who knows?)

i don't really get why this is such a big deal, really i don't. but it certainly seems to press a lot of buttons.

yes, soupy, i saw that and said thanks. (see now that i didn't put your name, so you probably missed it as being directed at you, soz).

I really don't understand the BLW or puree/ Annabel Karmel camps at all. I had both the Gill Rapely and AK books and they are not mutually exclusive you know! AK recommends offering finger-foods to let the baby learn to feed his/herself, and GR recommends dips, yoghurt, soups, stews etc on pre-loaded spoons. And there is no reason not to put the spoon in the baby's mouth yourself if it's obviously want they want.

"i think this illustrates the point i was making. there is nothing in that comment that says that all parents who puree feed are force feeding, yet presumably you are interpreting it that way? "

The implication is clear that spoon feeding is thought of as force feeding by those posters.

Unless you're bonkers enough to try to force food into your baby, then all weaning is "baby led". If they don't want it, they'll not eat it. Spoons really only help a baby who wants to eat anyway.
I use lots of finger food and also spoon feed. Often this entails my putting the mashed-up food on the spoon and her putting it in her mouth. Some food is runnier than others and she needs more help.
IMO avoiding spoons for the sake of it is a bit odd, and to me some BLW advocates seems to do just that.

My DD was weaned on finger-foods and it worked for her. We didn't call it baby-led-weaning though, I just went with what seemed to be working. I think the label (and people being overly purist about it) makes people think it's po-faced people who do it. Well, in some cases they are right, I have met some very smug and po-faced BLW-enthusiasts, as well as some who just did it quietly without bothering anyone.

I honestly don't see the point in babyfood jars and what have you, though, I have to say.

It's a theme that crops up whenever finger food is mentioned. Some posters have an air of smug superiority about not force feeding their child with a spoon.

Thank god i am well past all this nonsense. BabyDragon was a complete fecking nightmare to wean so we did it her way - from a spoon.

true, baroness.

i think what happened was that, say 6 or so years ago, when i was weaning dd1 it was ALL about AK. amazingly so. she has had her books in the New York Times top ten for the last ten years, week in, week out.

i was given two copies of her book for my own birthday, to give you an idea of how amazingly all-encompassing she was. Now, i am the eldest of four so pretty confident around children and knew that i wanted to wean in a less regimented manner than AK suggested, then i found out about BLW (there were six hits for the subject on Google when i started) and knew that it chimed more with me than AK. I'd seen my littlest sister wean herself practically ferally... with four of us my mum didn't have time for all the prep she'd done for me, the eldest.

in that intervening time, AK has brought out finger food books (she's no fool) and BLW has become more mainstream. I'm pretty sure what will happen is that things will even out to being more 'i let my kid eat what we are having and we do whatever is most practical in that moment, be it mashed or finger food' but while this... revolution against AK has been going on, things have been more polarized.

that's actually why i'm surprised to see this thread... i didn't think anyone bothered about the 'labels' any more. this all seems very five years ago.

I don't think it's stupid, although I didn't do it. Surely, like my DS, babies who are started on purees move on v quickly anyway? I don't et the great division. By 7.5 months he was feeding himself everything wr were eating bar yogurt etc which I fed him for the sake of the carpet

The attitude of a lot of blw parents gets my back up though. I was on a thread here when I was a bit hormonal, I'd just spoonfed DS cottage pie and a poster called spoon-feeding 'shovelling slop'. I was and quite upset for a bit till DH told me to cop onto myself . likewise, a very very irritating perfect parent I know on rl keeps banging on about it while judging. Meh.

DS2 was a singleminded little so and so from the word go and never once deigned to be fed from a spoon so it had to be BLW which I was behind in principle at the time. However it nearly gave me a heart attack every single meal time as he used to choke and splutter his way through. Got so as I had to sit in the other room with a brandy.

actually i disagree with you soupy. i think one was talking generally and while you may be onto something with the second poster, she might equally just have been replying in a similarly inflammatory way to the OP. you don't know, but you are certainly choosing to put the worse spin on it.

But thats the thing Aitch. The labels are alive and kicking as is the one upmanship and purism. I was told that unless you're literally letting your child eat off your plate it's not BLW.

i.e. Ak's finger foods made for the baby (which is what I did for DS as he's not keen on a spoon) is not BLW.

However, I like the idea of "feral weaning" . Maybe start a thread and let's make that the new thing.

Thank you for all your advice. I used and still do give him pasta bolognaise, cottage pie, fish pie but along with something I know he will eat. My husband thinks we should just go "hard core" and only give him one option and either he eats it or leaves it. He hopes this will work and kick start an end to the fussing. Has anyone else tried this? I'm quite desperate now to get him onto family meals.

These threads always degenerate into force-feeders vs would-be-chokers/spoon-avoiders. It's absolute nonsense.

More people should read the chat on Aitch's website before posting then there would be less ignorance, assumption and defensiveness.

Fussiness isn't caused by anything - parents post here in despair at their fussy eaters and they've done a whole range of things. It's just a phase some children go through.

BLW has been around forever - it just didn't have a fancy name when us lazy mums were doing it 13 years ago (or more). My DD's HV used to have kittens when she saw my DD eating mashed potato and sliced carrots with her hands at a very young age ( in those distant days we were told to wean at 12-16 weeks) - DD must have only been about 20 weeks, and was shovelling mash and carrots into her face with glee. HV was aghast, as I should have been lovingly pureeing things for her until she was at least 7/8mo...

I'm in the mixing both category. My ds tho is 19 weeks and showing tremendous interest in food- he gets very upset when we eat and it is clear that he wants some too. He is bf but has increased milk intake and feeds all day and frequently during the night. I'm now preparing to start spoonfeeds with fruit and veg and don't mind pureeing these for him. We will also give him finger foods as soon as he is ready. It's easy to say that years ago people didn't purée etc but my dh grandmother who is thankfully still alive at 94!!, tells us she spoonfed some of her children mashed potato at 6 weeks, and this was the norm to fill them up! So it's clear to see that thru the times, people have done what they thought was best for their children, I think we should remove all labels and just get on with feeding the kids, in whichever way is both best for their current abilities, and for each parent in their own right

Force feeders vs would-be-chokers

I think "feral weaning" should be the Next Big Thing, certainly.

Mwahaha to the 'feral weaning'. It's true. . Though at the moment, I am having to repeatedly persuade DS3 that eating the Argos book does not qualify as BLW...

BLW is just a name given to what many parents have done for many many years. It is not new or a trend or a fad.

And you don't have to do BLW or puree/mash. You can do both or one or the other at any given time. It really is not difficult or scientific, is is pretty bloody straightforward, not sure I get the fuss people make about labelling of it.