What age do you give them the spoon??

[Elf1981]

DD is 11 months old. We give her food cut up onto her highchair tray to eat herself such as blocks of cheese, fruits, veggies, pasta etc. She's quite happy to eat this by herself. For sloppier things like brekkie (porridge / weetabix) or things like spag bol / shep pie etc etc, we feed her ourselves.
At what age do you try teaching your child to use a spoon? Sometimes she'll hold on when I'm giving her food, but tends to do that so she can throw the spoon on the floor
Sorry for the thick question!

Give her another spoon for her own attempts, and inbetween carry on shovelling it in yourself, she'll soon get the gist of it.

Thanks. She does play with her spoons between mealtimes (the ones she has outgrown are in her toy box for some reason!) and has fairly decent hand / mouth co-ordination, but that's without food on it and it usually ends upside down anyway!
Time for a splash mat me thinks!
Thanks for the reply

Give her her own spoon and load it up for her in between the mouthfuls you give her - praise to the hilt of she even attempts to put it near the bowl herself. Be prepared for the entire contents of pre-loaded spoon to be flung everywhere

Hi Elf

We have two spoons.I load one up and hold it a little way from ds. He looks at it and leans towards it with his mouth wide open waiting for it to go in. Once he realises it isn't going in he grabs the spoon and shoves it inhimself. Sometimesit goes up his nose,on his chin, even in his ear once lol

I then load the 2nd spoon and once he's cleaned off the first he grabs for the 2nd and lets me take the first one to reload and so on.

We haven't progressed to himloading the spoon yet.

Elf, I come across your posts from time to time, and its very reassuring because my dd is same age, and you are often posting what I'm thinking

Our dd started refusing spoon early on, but will sometimes take out of our hands and put in own mouth. Usually she turns it upside down on the way so all the food goes down her front. We have invested in those bibs with arms. H&M have some cheap ones.

Lots of the time she it goes on the chair/floor - she can now dunk in the bowl too.

Of the babies I know who are similar age - others arent even grabbing the spoon yet so their mums arent bothering until the baby shows more interest which sounds very sensible to me.

LOL Bumbleweed, I think I've read some of your posts and thought "I was just thinking that myself"!

My DS is 13 months and won't take anything but yogurt off a spoon. if I give him a spoon he'll give it a shot but it involves hitting the pot with the spoon then getting angry and throwing it on the floor. If he gets a mouthful, he chews on the spoon for ages and then throws it. Our cream carpets are NOT coping lol! looking at getting different flooring in the kitchen pronto.

I'm not sure what the normal milestong for feeding themselves is... anyone know so I can be suitably paranoid that my DS isn't meeting it

suzi, I visited nursery that dd is going to start next month

there were 11 babies sitting in highchairs for lunch time, aged between 8 to 15 months

only one of the eleven was self-feeding with a spoon

I asked the nursery nurse whether they were teaching the others and she said, they wait for the babies to take the initiative and start grabbing the spoon ..... so I wouldnt worry about your ds

My DS2 (12m) has just started self feeding with a spoon but only sticky foods (like ready brek I make it thick!) and he can't load it.
But he will eat everything else (and I mean everything from finger food to shepherds pie to yoghurt) with his fingers. And si I now have my hands back to eat my own food!!
I have a large sheet of plastic table protector under his chair and one on the table too. (I got it from Dunelm you buy it by the meter and it has groovy patterns (we have fruit on the table and icecream on the floor!))