posted last night, quootie.
as to your question... weeeellll, no, kinda, yes, but not really.
i think that BLW is if anything more about encouraging the child not to be freaked out by food than it is nutrition, certainly for the first few months of trying it.
and as you will see with toys, keys, anything really, what children like to do is pick things up, turn them upside down, stick them up their noses, rub them into their hair and put them in their mouths. so in a way, if they are only touching the spoon that they are using to feed themselves they are being deprived of all this wonderful tactile learning experience.
but a spoon is part of a child's learning experience as well, i would say, so i do give my dd them to play with (mostly in the bath, where they double as handy temperature gauges). and if we have yogurt, i put the spoon on her highchair tray along with banana and other fruit for dipping. some of it gets in her mouth...
i would forget about the spoons for a while, though, and concentrate on letting your baby touch everything first. in my previous post i was really just wanting to say not to be embarassed about using spoons because BLW is really a guiding principle rather than a diehard dogma, so as long as it's working for you and your baby then there is, IMHO, never any reason to feel embarrassed...