My 13 mo will barely feed himself at all. There are a handful of things that he won't immediately throw on the ground. Even if he's hungry, and will eat when I feed him with a spoon or by hand, most of the time he will throw it immediately off the high chair tray. Even if I put just one or two pieces on the tray at a time. He used to be a bit better but I feel at fault because I think I was a bit guarded to avoid messes. The ironic part... I started with baby led weaning!
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My son has never been food motivated and he was not interested in self-feeding for the longest time. All I can tell you is one day it clicked and he started doing it. Don't let him fill up on too much milk (my ped told me by 12 months, 8-12oz of milk is plenty from a calcium perspective if he's eating cheese and yogurt). We would prep a spoonfed meal and then keep a bites plate next to us and then put 1-2 pieces on his tray at a time. The plate would usually have 2-3 different foods we knew he liked (rice balls, cheerios, banana, blueberries, etc). While he played with his bits of food, we'd be spooning him other stuff, and we did this for months. It was at this point he started finally using the "more" sign - if he wanted something else to pinch up and eat. Once he was getting like 50% of his food from pinching up, we fed him a bit less by spoon and started giving him a bigger variety of stuff for the tray. Chicken apple breakfast sausage, tiny meatballs, mac n' cheese, tiny pasta shapes, peas, corn, bits of steamed veggies, along with his favorites.
There is a LOT of food waste at this point, which drives me nuts, and I can't say DS is a great eater at this point either - he's just not interested in food - but we keep a splat mat on the floor and relish the days he's going through a growth spurt and cleans his plate. If he has a bad meal, I just make his next snack more substantive (i.e. a yogurt cup instead of puffs, etc). He's sleeping at night and seems happy, so I figure he's getting what he needs!
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I think you'd mentioned in the past that he still nurses quite a bit...maybe he's just not that hungry for solids?
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@winniebee: you are so right! I have been trying to offer food first but it's hard for me to get the timing right. Work in progress.
@gingerbabe your replies have been so helpful today! Muchas gracias!!! -
@junebugsmama: I would try to cut back on nursing to see if that makes a difference (if you're concerned about his solids).
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My LO is younger than yours but he does love food. Even still, there are some things (or some days) that he just throws it. I cut things into small pieces and only give a few at a time to cut down on the mess. I do his morning bottle before breakfast, but otherwise I give him lunch and dinner before formula and he eats those pretty well. I swear he knows the difference between carbs and veggies because he will eat the pasta and throw the green beans. I don't try to force him cause he just gets more assertive
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Mine isn't really interested in self feeding either and he's 14 months. It took my older son a while to get into it too, so I just keep offering, but I try not to worry about it... yet.
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6 comments