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?? :)

Ah, sorry 101, I'm trying to do too many things at once.

well i guess i was talking about historical evidence. I'm not much into the idea of spitting meat into my baby's mouth, even though he seems to think its fine to mush a soggy chunk of chicken that he's been saving in his little fist into mine, he's very generous!

Times change.

hello too - yes, trying to keep away, mostly. yy, I see that, but then I guess the argument hinges on when you'd wean, as much as how - if you're a mammal you might wean when offspring is physically capable to manipulate solid food - which in my experience with my own children was about 24-26 weeks. Meh - I did it because dd flat out refused a spoon but snatched food and ate it - other children I expect are the opposite.

Horrible, horrible grammar in my post about human/non-human infant maturity. Better go to bed.

Well, I'd imagine that blw might not suit more than 6% of parents too! Aitch and I have a shared dislike of pureed food anyway, which prob affected our own choices!

Aitch - i was backing up my point that 'babies' would be not necessarily be using their fingers, way back. I didn't want you all to think I am advocating 6 month old infants being taught how to use cutlery

its getting late for me. Night all xx

Yes, mine both keen on spoons. But then also keen on newspapers, cotton wool, shoes etc etc

Ew. 2 exclamation marks trumps yr bad grammar, zeph.

here's a link to an article on that

thing is, if you've seen a six-month-old eat half a bowl of pasta right in front of your very eyes, there's very little point in getting out the spoons as they've rather demonstrated that they're not part of the six per cent, so much as i think the research is brilliant i do find her recommendation a bit ridiculous. quite different if your child isn't picking food up and eating it, obviously, but surely that comes back to not being dogmatic about a method and being able to be a flexible parent...

as i say, it would be interesting to see the puree research that has been done.

Unfortunately there is a point behind the CBeebies joke though, and the reduced interaction with blw isn't often mentioned. (And Aitch the WHO research post was for you specifically in response to one of your questions, not the CBeebies one in case I've caused confusion)

(it's true... blended soups etc make me heave. apart from heinz cream of tomato, obv.)

how is there reduced interaction with blw? the child is at the family dinner table enjoying a meal with the people they love. have you ever been spoon fed? it's not actually a bundle of laughs having someone else be in control of your dinner. you should try it, actually, it's a fascinating exercise. do make sure you are hungry first and the person feeding you goes off and answers the phone mid-way through the proceedings.

Google says great apes do premastication too. New market for Hipp?

God, must go to bed.

I have been spoon fed, I used to spoon feed disabled adults and as part of my training was spoon fed. Done well it is fine.

Ah, that's interesting, zeph. But then they don't cook food, so I wonder if the effect is similar?

And I don't get the reduced interaction thing either - where's that come from?

fine? or sociable and enjoyable?

and done well? you were trained, i presume? is this training also given to all parents?

did you poll the disabled adults in your care as to whether if they were able to feed themselves they would nevertheless prefer you to feed them?

But most parents aren't trained to spoon feed, are they? Bah - I don't want to argue against spoon feeding, because I genuinely do think that children and parents have quite distinct and reasonable preferences, but I do think that the cult of Karmel is more of a PITA and a commercialisation fest than a couple of books and blogs on BLW

in fact, have you yourself, as someone capable of feeding themselves (as are 94% of weaning age children) nevertheless continued to ask to be spoonfed?

agreed, habbibu. i don't care about who feeds what in which way At All. apart from myself, because i know what myself and my children were happiest doing.

If you are not BLW, your child can still sit at the family meal and eat the same food mashed. But the child is benefiting from someone interacting with them, asking if they are full, getting eye contact etc. On the weaning boards, one of the pluses of blw that is frequently mentioned is that the baby can just eat with no interaction.

But doesn't your own meal get cold? yy, selfish, I know - but I think maybe wants meant (but poorly phrased) is that you don't need to physically interact with your child,, in the sense of actually feeding them w BLW. BUt you could equally spoon feed in silence or chat to your BLW child about food, whether it's nice, have they had enough - that's to do with being a friendly interactive parent, not manner of feeding.

what's, dammit.

oh, now i see what you meant by 'the criteria is whether or not babies become malnourished', ilovemountains, sorry i hadn't twigged that before. reading the thread back, i see you mean the criteria for purees having 'worked for years'.

i disagree, however, in the west very few babies are in danger of malnourishment so i think our criteria for weaning 'working' has to be different. otherwise you could feed a child until they were the size of a beach ball and by your criteria it would be a huge success. i think we should be looking at obesity, diabetes etc.

there's nothing btw to advocate BLW there either yet, i should say, but then we don't live in a society that automatically assumes that BLW 'works', hence the heaps of research being done at the moment. whereas puree 'has worked for years'... the same years as a diabetes and obesity bomb has hit the west. (am not arguing that correlation = causation btw, just that is might be worth looking at).

can you link to a thread that says a plus of blw is that babies can eat with 'no interaction'? certainly we interact as a family, chatting, smiling, eating, enjoying etc. i really can't think of anything worse than someone asking me if i'm full all the time, let me decide for myself.

you also didn't answer my question as to whether you have preferred, as someone (like the 94% of six-month-old babies) capable of self-feeding, to continue to be spoon-fed.

I think that before people dis the idea of BLW they should read Gill Rapley's book. If they still don't like the idea, fair enough, but actually I find it quite hard to believe you could read it and not think BLW was a good idea.

There are very valid reasons why being spoon fed is not great for a baby's development.

I also think there could be quite a link with puree fed babies and obesity. I think spoon feeding does enable you to feed a baby more than they need and it does quicky over-ride the 'full' button.

However, what I hate most are the generalisation about what 'spoon feeders' think of 'BLWers' and vice versa. People are individuals, not one homogeneous mass!