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I can't remember when we started offering a spoon/fork to LO - maybe 13-14 months, but definitely not consistently. He started doing pretty well with them around 16-17 months. He caught onto the spoon really fast, but for the fork, I started by spearing stuff for him and letting him put it in his mouth, then held it with him and speared it together, until he decided he wanted to do it on his own. He's 19 months now and eats most of his meal with his utensils. Yogurt is still pretty messy, but he does great with the fork. But he still lifts up his plate and dumps it when he's done, so we're working on that!

My biggest problem is that LO appears to be lefty, while my husband and I are righty. We're having the hardest time trying to figure out how to show him to hold things!

I started with silverware pretty early on so she was pretty good with spoon and fork from early on. Some items she still uses her hands because it's easier for her or sometimes she's hungry and she goes to town with her hands but then I just remind her to use her fork.

I don't tolerate feet on the table or standing on her chair. We went through a very brief period of plate throwing. She drinks from a cup, etc. We've also got her handing out napkins at meals and our form of "grace" is giving a kiss and saying I love you before the start of the meal.

As far as etiquette in terms of soup, dessert, salad fork, etc. that's not us so I don't think I'll ever get there! Planning on starting chopsticks again soon.

She's almost 2.

We started with his fork and spoon probably around a year? At almost 19 months he's basically mastered it now....he can eat applesauce or yogurt by himself. We've always been big on not throwing food. We just moved him to the booster seat and right now we're really struggling with him wanting to put his feet on the table.

We've started casually working on it qt 15 months. For a spoon it works well to have a long one so LO can hold and you can still guide the end. I usually do spoon with cottage cheese which is a favorite food and a little messy, but not terrible. For fork, I usually spear the food and then let him get it off. I just keep it totally low key...