I need a few days off from the serious topics. So for those of you who also come here for the lighter side of things…Rhiannon eating porridge, and her deep attachment to her spoon (even though she almost never uses it). She turns 19 months on May 13 for reference.
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Awesome! A great representation of how a baby learns to feed herself. Great job, Rhi, spoon or no spoon. (“We don’t need no stinkin’ spoon…” “Hey – where are you going with my spoon?!”)
Spoons have questionable utility, but should ALWAYS be there in case she deigns to use it.
I loved this video, thank you so much for sharing it. My 17-month-old now takes most of her meals under Asian rules of child feeding – i.e., adult spoonfeeds (literally) the child. My mother won’t even let her feed herself finger food, shrieking about ‘dirtying the house’.
I don’t approve – but feel unable to protest as without this support, I wouldn’t have been able to go back to work. Most Asians were brought up this way and it didn’t do them lasting harm.
Question though – how do you deal with cleanup operations especially with two to supervise? I find that with just one, if I’m busy cleaning up her mess, she can very quickly create a new mess for me to tackle next…
Sorry to take so long to respond.
Ellie can be trusted to stay clean (or clean enough) when eating. Rarely she’ll need a shirt change, or for me to do a second pass with a wet wipe on her face, but for the most part she’s independent.
With Rhi, we keep a box of wet wipes nearby. We expect that an outfit change may be necessary (in the case of yogurt or oatmeal as above) and that it may be easiest to just take her into the bathroom and hose her off. Yes, sometimes food ends up on the floor. But it’s marble-it is easily cleaned up, even if it can be a pain in the ass to do so.
But I think this is more a case of different cultures, different values, different strategies.