Question for BLW babies who are now toddlers....

[TheAuthoress]

I never intended to BLW my DD, now 16 months, but gave her a lot of fingers foods from day 1 of weaning and she really enjoyed feeding herself and soon enough was refusing to take anything from a spoon, except for porridge at breakfast, so we allowed her to eat everything with her hands.

We've been putting down a fork / spoon with every meal that we use cutlery with, to try and encourage her, but she's just not interested and wants to use her hands.

So my question is, those that BLW, how did you get your DC to use cutlery and when did it happen consistently? With my older DS I spoon fed him and gave him finger foods and we moved onto his using a spoon too and by the age of DD he was using a spoon by himself so I haven't a clue what to do!

Once they got to a certain level of understanding, I'd just ask them. DS2 who's just turned two needs a fair bit of gentle reminding and will, if it's tricky like peas, pick up food with his fingers to spear it onto his fork to eat them. DS1 age 4 has perfectly good table manners/ can use fork and knife appropriately. I think it was maybe 3ish when cutlery usage became consistent.

I would also say that proper cutlery helps, baby spoon/ forks are often a bit rubbish for babies to actually eat with. We have some tommy tippee cutlery with metal ends and plastic handles which seems to work well (neither of the children have ever managed to injure themselves with it) often half price in Tesco.

DS is 17 months and for the last 6 weeks or so has been interested in using cutlery but he just did it himself. He's great eating cereal with a spoon in the morning. He tries to use his fork at lunch and will get potato or veg onto it but when he tries to spear meat it's hit and miss and he usually ends up picking it up. By teatime he eats with his hands mostly.

I think like most things, they develop an interest when they're ready and will experiment with it. At 16 months I'd only expect the start of some passing interest in cutlery.

22MO twins (b/g)

I ask them to use their spoon/fork but have zero preference for which they use. Pasta normally gets inhaled eaten with hands. DTD quite likes to eat her mash with her fingers. I smile and shrug and let them get on with it. Cutlery is always offered (and DTS in partic is very fond of a 'big fork' ie a normal adult fork) but in line with the BLW philosophy, it's their food. They can eat it however they like. That said, they use their spoon/fork 80% of the time.

I am zero tolerance on food throwing - bowl is immediately taken away. A small amount of smearing is permitted but not properly messing about.

I do advise that you get proper metal toddler cutlery - boots do some and it is excellent. Much easier to spear food with for eg.

Thanks for the replies, I'm relieved to know that she isn't 'expected' to be using cutlery just yet. I think I may have a set of metal cutlery from when DS was a toddler so I'll dig that out and give her a go with that, and just keep putting it out at every meal.

Spoons are harder. Forks can be quite fun because you have to "stab" things. The ikea ones are sharp enough to work but plastic if you can't find proper metal ones - a lot of them are effectively useless because they are far too blunt.

I'm not sure what age it was, but DD reached an age where she was just interested in doing the same as Mummy & Daddy and that's when she started using cutlery. Now her baby brother has started weaning she's regressed though!!!

Did BLW with both DDs (now 5 and 3). Both can use knife/fork/spoon reasonably well, and I offered cutlery from about 6-8 months (spoons mainly). Yoghurts were the "easiest" to get to grips with cutlery, likewise risottos. To be honest, even my 5 year old still uses fingers with spaghetti/noodles as she loves picking at it to eat.