How to Teach Your Child Self Feeding

My 2 y.o. daughter Sophia feeds herself kasha with a spoon

The ability to eat with a spoon and drink from a cup is one of the first self-service skills.

Spoon is one of the first tools which your baby starts using for its intended purpose. It is crucial for a child to learn to self feed, and it can’t be done without the help of adults.

It all depends on the parents at what age their baby learns to self feed. The more they look after their child, the longer it takes them to learn these new skills. And vice versa, when mother does not prevent her baby from desire to be self-dependant and supports them in everything, her child quickly copes with this new task.

When teaching children how to use a spoon on their own parents should arm themselves with patience. Feeding will take more time, than usually, and the learning process can take many days. You should be ready for your baby and everything around them to get messy during the meal. After each meal you will need to wipe the table, the floor, your child’s hands and face dirty with food. But this should not be a reason for you to give up the idea and get back to spoon-feeding.

When to start

All children are different in terms of the time they need to learn this new skill, but most commonly, by the age of 1.5 – 2 they already start self feeding.

Psychologists recommend starting to give your child their own spoon, when they already sit well and eat with the help of their mother in the highchair. It normally happens at the age of 7-8 months.

First self feeding skills of your baby show up when they start eating cookies, dried crust or bread. At the next step of the development your baby starts taking food from the plate by hand. You should never scold them for doing it because this is a kind of training: your child takes the food by hand and learns to put it right to their mouth. These very manipulations bring your little one closer to learning the skills of self feeding. After all, before start eating with a spoon, your child should learn taking and keeping objects between thumb and index finger. When your little one learns this important skill (it usually happens by the age of 7-8 months) you can start teaching them to use a spoon.

Sophia comfortably holds a slice of bread with butter and red caviar but still manages to get the caviar all over her face.

We have self-service

From the very early age you should teach your child to eat in the kitchen or dining room. For feeding you need to buy a special highchair with a detachable table, which will be a comfortable place for your baby to eat.

Your little one should also have their own dishes: a spoon, аsoup plate and a dinner plate, a cup. All children’s dishes should be unbreakable, because they may fall on the floor many times during the meals. Heat-resistant food plastic meets these requirements.

Plate. Your baby’s first plate should be with high boards and suction cup. This plate can be fastened to the table and your child won’t be able to turn it over. It will be more interesting for your baby to eat, if the plate has different animals or fairy-tale characters on it. You can make up some fairy-tale and interest your child in the subject on the plate. There are also heated plates: they have a special bowl inside which is filled with hot water. Thus, food remains warm for a long time.

Cup. You should better choose a cup of a smaller size (not more than 3 – 4.5 oz) with handles on both sides. Children can hold it with both hands.

Spoon. There are special spoons for children: they are rather small with easy-to-use handle, more often it has round form which is convenient for a little palm to grasp.

Fork. Introduce fork feeding from the age of 1.5 – 2 when your child already mastered using a spoon. Prongs of the fork should not be sharp but rounded to avoid injuring your baby. You should show your child that when pinning some food slice with a fork (a bit of meat, fish, etc), it should be held with prongs down, and when eating some pasty food (mashed potatoes, pasta) – it should be held like a spoon.

It is very important that mother shows her baby how to pin the food with a fork and how to carefully take the food off the fork with the mouth without injuring it.

You can also use special training dishes for kids. Plastic spoons and forks from these sets have the form bent towards the face. Due to this form it is easier for your baby to bring the food to the mouth.

Knife. A bit later, at the age of 2.5 – 3, you can give the child not sharp children’s knife, but before that you should show how to use it correctly.

Bib. For not having your baby all messy during the meal, it is necessary to put on a special waterproof apron or a bib with a pocket at the bottom. You should have some spare bibs as after each feeding they need to be washed. Bibs with a bent border are especially convenient as they prevent liquid food from spilling on your child’s clothes. These bibs are made of special soft and flexible plastic. They are really easy-to-use because they don’t need to be washed but can be easily wiped with a cloth and dried. It is quite enough to have one bib of that kind. Wiped after the meal, it is ready for use after 5 minutes already.

Training principles

For successful training you need to consistently stick to some basic principles.

When decided to start teaching your baby to self feed, this decision should be discussed with all the members of the family to prevent a situation when mother teaches the child to use a spoon, and grandmother or other relatives feed them. In this case the baby will be lazy and the training process can take considerably longer.

The training process should be held every day so that your child does not forget already learnt skills.  However if your little one is sick, cutting teeth, tired or simply in a bad mood do not make them self feed.  In such situations it is better to feed the child with a spoon and later when everything is back normal, give them a new try and offer self feeding again.

It is necessary that parents show how they eat by eating altogether. The basic feature of children’s behaviour is imitation; therefore when watching adults children will try to follow their example and will try to eat independently.

It is better to feed the child exactly at a set time.

First attempts of self feeding with a spoon will have more success if you prepare some porridge or sauce. This food is thick and your baby will easier bring it to their mouth. If you offer your little one to eat soup on their own, they will spill it from the spoon before it gets to their mouth.

It is better to offer the child self feeding when they are really hungry. Let your child eat tasty and favorite dishes.

You shouldn’t put everything you have prepared for dinner in front of your baby at once. In this case they will choose something they like most of all and refuse to eat the rest of the food. The first and second courses should be served separately on different plates.

Spoon feeding

For your child to understand how to eat with a spoon, mother should put her hand on the top of theirs and show how to use it correctly. Mother takes her baby’s hand to hers, dip the spoon into the plate to get enough food and help to bring the spoon with the food to their mouth. When the process is revised several times, your kid will understand how to use a spoon. At first your baby will hold it in their fist as their motor skills and motion coordination are not developed enough. It is hard for a child to hold a spoon correctly.

The main goal for a child at this step is to bring the food to the mouth.  But anyway you should show your child how to hold a spoon correctly as it will help them to learn it step-by-step.

If your child started self feeding and does it successfully and with appetite but gets tired quickly mother should finish feeding the meal up to the end.  It is better doing it at the same time but with a second spoon. If your baby has problems scooping the food you can offer them a spoon which is already filled with the food. You can also offer you little another option: one spoon is put to their mouth by mother, another one – on their own.

A self-dependent child: a cup

You can start teaching your baby to use a cup at the age of 6-8 months. Many parents use sippy cups when changing from breast feeding or bottle drinking to cup drinking. It is much easier for a baby to learn to drink from a sippy cup than from a regular one. Sippy cup is a plastic cup which has a special cover with a spout; drinks from this spout get directly to the child’s mouth. But you should not necessarily teach your child to drink from a sippy cup before they learn to drink from a regular one.

First of all, mother should show her kid how to use a cup by drinking from a cup in front of her baby. Then you should carefully press a cup to the lips of your child, slightly incline it and let them make 1-2 gulps of their favorite drink. At first you should hold the cup and control the process keeping it safe. Your kid will soon learn the proper inclination for the liquid to get to the mouth and then you can allow them to drink from a cup independently. While training it is important to stick to these two rules:

• at first you should pour a little liquid to a cup, just 3-4 gulps to prevent your kid from choking;
• the drink in the cup should be usual for your baby.

Etiquette for your child

From the early age your child develops correct feeding behaviour and habits. Therefore it is necessary to teach them the proper behaviour at the table at the same time when teaching to self feed.

Before meal always wash your child’s hands. It is one of the main hygienic skills. Mother should show her kid how to wash their hands properly, and try to provide some simple explanation of the purpose of doing it.

Do not feed your baby outside the kitchen or during the play. When trying to feed the child many mothers surround them with various toys which is totally wrong. From the very beginning you should show you kid that during any meal we should eat, and only after meal we can play.

Do not allow your child to play with food and utensils. When your baby starts playing about, you should stop the feeding immediately.

You should not scold your child for being messy; it is better to teach them to use a napkin. The right age for doing it is 18 months. First of all mother should show its purpose by using a napkin on her own. After that you can give one to your baby.

Rules for adults

You should not feed your child violently as it may cause negative attitude to food.

Do not rush your baby during the meal.

Do not leave alone your child during the meal; they can choke.

You should always praise your little one even if they don’t make any good progress.

And finally, two important universal rules for adults to remember when teaching kids to be self-independent:

–        do not demand from your child more than they can do;

–        do not do for your baby something they can do on their own.

Magazine ” Mother & Baby”, #4, 2012