A few questions about BLW

[trrk]

My 8 month old generally prefers to feel herself so I guess you can say we are doing BLW (although I did some purees too at the beginning).

There are a few things I've been wondering:

For soft and relatively liquid foods like yoghurt, porridge and mashed potato do you just give them pre-loaded spoons or do you let them eat with their fingers? I see people giving plates with yoghurt in one section but was wondering how baby eats it?

I have just been placing things on the high chair tray - if you also did this at what point did you switch to a bowl or plate?

We gave a bowl or pot (if yoghurt) and a spoon and let them crack on. I think the first few times I held my hand over theirs to show the scooping movement. We had suction bowls. I wimped out a bit with soup though, and always served it as a pasta sauce 😬

We did a mix. Mostly my daughter liked thick, Greek yoghurt, so she ate with her hands initially, or we might have put some fruit stick for her to dip and lick/bite.
we also pre-loaded spoons and handed them to her or left them on the tray to explore.

Greek yoghurt is your friend with BLW - it's much less oozy! We gave a soft spoon, and helped load it to give them the idea, but didn't object if fingers went in. DS was using a spoon happily (if still missing a lot!) a few months in.

Plates I can't remember exactly but pretty late I think - the danger with plates is that they contain the mess OK until they're flipped onto the floor and everything splatters. We did try a plate with suckers but DS seemed to take it as a challenge to see how quickly he could rip it off. A large PVC tablecloth under the chair and surroundings makes cleaning up so much easier.

We did give DS a spoon, and sometimes put some food on it for him, but he mostly just shovelled everything in with his hands. He's nearly 2 now and quite good at using his cutlery - though sometimes still does just eat his pasta with his hands! We've got a couple of suction bowls that stay on better than others.

Soup we would make quite thick and break up pieces of bread into it.