When should I allow DS to try to start feeding himself (already eats finger foods)

[Holymoly321]

DS is 10 months old and although he does eat finger foods like breadsticks, cheese chunks, pieces of fruit etc, most of his food is the meals that I make him and feed him from the spoon. Should I be starting to let him feed himself with the spoon? The mess is bad enough with me feeding him! If so, how should I go about it? Other than getting matching paint for the kitchen walls ready to cover the mess!

Well my 10 month old won't let me near him with a spoon all of a sudden. So I've had to resort to all finger foods. The only way i can get him to eat food off a spoon from me is if I give him a finger food and while he's trying to find his mouth, shovel in some other food.

I've let him try to feed himself some things but the mess is incredible. So now I let him feed himself but just put a few pieces of stuff down in front of him at a time.

Yesterday I gave him pieces of cheese, pieces of ham, pieces of cucumber, carrot and yellow pepper, pita bread and hummus - they all went into a bowl and I just let him help himself. The mess (particularly the hummus) was incredible but he ate it all and only when he started dropping the food on the floor (right at the end) did I realise he'd had enough - otherwise there was very little food dropping.

PS - I've also been a bit worried about how to get him to have enough protein with finger foods because veg, fruit and carbs are easy to make into finger foods but meat is less easy - even cooked chicken pieces in small chunks aren't easy for him

So I just made up a batch of little 'sausages' using minced pork, some sage, breadcrumbs and some egg. Am going to grill them now and freeze them - and hopefully he'll like them.

Hi J - those sausages sound interesting! What's the recipe and how do you intend to cook them and then reheat them once they're frozen?

Well - the sausages weren't quite as successful as I'd hoped but haven't tried them on him yet. I took a tub of minced pork (not sure of the size), and grated in an apple and half an onion. Then added a big pinch of sage and a sprinkle of white pepper. I added about half an egg and probably about half a cup of bread crumbs but I did it by sight and feel rather than exact measurements.

I didnt really want to fry them so I tried rolling the mix into little sausage shapes using flour to stop them being too sticky. Then I put them on a greased baking tray and baked them in a 180C oven for about 20 mins - but they looked fairly anemic. So I ended up browning them in a pan with a little bit of olive oil. I have just bunged them in a freezer bag and hope that they freeze ok.

I have an older son who has survived my cooking experiments so hopefully this one will too