BLW - when do they learn not to shove too much food into their mouths?!

[Tinkjon]

DS (8mo) has pretty much stopped gagging but he just keeps putting more and more food into his mouth without swallowing. When did your lo's stop doing this and switch to the proper pattern of bite, swallow, bite, swallow?

depends on the child, tink. what if you only put one piece of food on his tray?

took a while with our boy! I think at 8 months he still wasn't swallowing much, if anything. but it does suddenly start happening.

it's like a watched pot, iyswim.

Aitch, even if I only put one piece on the tray he just keeps putting that particular piece into his mouth until it's all gone - which won't be a problem once he has pincer grip and can pick up small pieces, but at this moment we're still on the chip=shaped bits though, so there's quite a lot for him to swallow. Oh well, I suppose I shouldn't complain - I'm sure there are many BLW mums who would be glad if their child actually put anything in its mouth

he's an IDIOT, then.
actually dd used to do that with chip-shaped stuff, jamming it in until it made her gag, the little fool.

that's when we moved onto chunks of food that she was kind of forced to nibble at. she really wasn't on chip-shaped for long, thinking about it. imho that's something GR has got a bit wrong, and i remember asking the ladies on my blog about it and they pretty much all agreed. i think if you're actually doing it rather than reseraching it then you realise that they need something bigger a bit sooner than is suggested.

Not sure I understand - bigger than chip-shaped? Surely chunks of food are smaller than that, though? Or do you mean big
chunks, then? Like roast potato sized? I don't mean he puts the whole chip into his mouth, I mean he bites a bit off and then bites another bit off before he's swallowed the first bit. He can't seem to deal with any other shape as he can't get at what is in his fist.

aye, like fist-sized. it may encourage him to nibble. or not, but it's worth a try. dd used to put so much in her mouth she'd have to push it out with her tongue, the greedy git.

DD was doing this until last week and has suddenly stopped and started using cutlery - properly too!

She's nearly 19 months.

I found getting a sectioned plate really helped as well, because you can chop stuff up and they spend so much time sorting things between the sections they forget to cram!

LOL at "greedy git", Aitch Will try some big chunks instead then, thanks.

chocolate, 19 months?! Am I going to have to pick food out of his gob for another year?!

No don't worry, it will fall out mostly. DD was particularly good at the hamster impressions as well.

I did find she was better with big stuff too - a whole apple is easier to nibble than slices which you can shove five at once in.

Or you could sit there handing over one bit at a time - DH tried that. DD calmly unclipped her harness, stood on her chair, grabbed the plate from him and threw it at him. And I'm afraid I laughed!

I'm afraid my dd still does this at 2.3! I do cut up her food, to minimise it, but if she eats things herself by hand (bagel, sandwiches, fruit etc) then she just shoves in a huge piece, and holds one hand over her mouth whilst chewing to prevent anything falling out!

She usually catches my eye and giggles wickedly whilst she does it too [grr]