Eating is fun
What if your 2 year old child eat herself via spoon. It will really give you immense pleasure even if they couldn’t use cutlery perfectly. For this innate happiness, just allow your infant to eat by herself . Obviously, initially it will create a mess giving you extra effort for the cleaning. But this effort is only for short term.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O1o5Dhh7DE
Children are the good observers. They always learn by imitating us. They have keen desire to try new things themselves. Give them spoon and watch how are they exploring it.
At eight months when my daughter can sit straight at her support, I bought a high chair. At her eating time, I managed to sat her on this chair. Just keep slices of food in front of her. And guide her how to pick the food, put in the mouth and chew the food. Sometimes she picked the food immediately. Sometimes I waited as she was playing with the food and watching the food with the curiosity. This is fun time for her. In the meantime just talk to your baby about the given food and about its ingredients. Let help them identify the given food. Is this silly? No, this is not. Children are best listener . When you talk , their vocabulary increases. Also, talk about food during meal time will increase their interest in that food.
Type of food that you can provide to your baby that they can learn to pick and eat by themselves could be small slices of chillas, roti, pua , bananas, watermelon etc. After they learn to pick the slices up to eat , let’s allow them a try to explore cutlery. Obviously , they were not be able to fold their hands properly in the beginning. They will just end up in dropping their food creating a cleaning mess-up for you. Just keep patience as this mess-up is only for short term. Instead of loosing patience or getting angrier ,hold their hand and teach them how to use spoon.
Start with fork as they can easily learn to pick their food via fork. Give slices of food/fruits that can be tucked in the fork and let them eat themselves.
Perhaps by 10 months, my daughter could picked up Fruits slices, Chapati slices ,pancakes, etc herself using her tiny fingers and chew them. She started to eat via spoon properly by her second birthday and learnt to use fork even before that.
At her 2 years, she started eating her favorites such as rice pulav, khichdi, etc. via spoon herself. This was a award winning milestone for me. I got this award as I choose baby led weaning where baby learns to eat herself. And here I am the winner.
In short, just give your child an opportunity to learn eating by themselves. They will make fun with the food, play with the food. Forget worries about cleaning and wiping the food stains for fewer months and follow No To Spoon Feeding policy.
