Not really weaning, but 14 month old eating question

[Eminybob]

This is probably a stupid question but if you have a 14 month old how do they eat?

Hands?
Cutlery themselves?
Spoon fed by you?

We did kind of BLW so DS has always eaten with his hands except for stuff like yogurt, porridge etc which I spoon feed him.

He's just started nursery and he's being encouraged to use cutlery himself, which is great and we are trying to get him to do the same at home. But although he can get a loaded fork into his mouth he's struggling to get the food on the fork in the first place, so I spend dinner times loading the fork/helping him to, which seems like a bit of a step backwards as before we could all eat together as he would just get on with it with his hands.

So what do the rest of you do? I know he needs to learn to use cutlery so is now the best time to teach him? Or should I have done it sooner?

Bump

DD is the same age as your DS and we did BLW too. She's just started getting interested in cutlery so I give her a fork and spoon with dinner, she stabs and scoops with varying degrees of success, then eventually finishes off with her hands. We've been doing this for a few weeks and she's made much faster progress than I would have expected :)

So do you leave her with the fork and spoon and just let her get on with it?

Although to be fair I always gave her a pre loaded spoon with yoghurt, porridge etc so she's had months to work on getting the food into her mouth, it's getting it onto the spoon/fork she's learning.

Nobody I know with DCs of similar ages are much further along, if at all, so don't worry about having left it.

Cross posts, yes that's what I do.

Yep, always gave a spoon and fork with every meal, and let them have a go. Eventually they get the hang of it, although I found that some of the baby forks didn't really have enough length to actually stab bits of food. We swapped to the kind that has a proper fork shape and that worked better.

Ok thanks.

What I have found is if I put food on a fork for him he's more likely to eat it than if he's left to pick it up himself. Like I thought he didn't like veg because he doesn't often touch whatever's on his plate, but now I've found, since using a fork that he will eat veg off a fork! Strange child.

I did have some plastic forks which were just pointless so I've got him tommee tippee metal ones now which are loads better.