Ignatius is 1 now. We decided to start letting him get the habit of feeding himself. The decision came after much deliberation. Strange, you think? After all, it must be every parents' dream that their kids become independent eaters right? Well...yes. But the journey to that end point is arduous! Imagine food plastered on the walls, a baby covered in food that was supposed to be in the stomach, food all over the highchair and floor....ARGH!So we had a mental excuse-list, sorry we meant checklist, to determine when our little boy is ready to be trained in self feeding.
Firm grasp. Ok, he's got it. We can think of countless of times he's got hold of something, and we can't pry it out of his fist. Probably checked this off months ago. He's gotten very good at the palm-grasp and could stuff bread/rice puffs in his mouth at about 8mths.
Chews and swallows well. Most definitely! He's a Natural Born Eater. He's now onto normal adult-consistency rice, having started at about 11mths.
Hand-eye-mouth coordination with spoon. Well, we tested the hand-eye mouth coordination with finger foods first. He's good at grabbing food and cramming it into his mouth immediately...i think as is with most babies. I'd say he passed this at about 9~10mths.
Pincer grasp. Sigh...the last excuse we have not to start. He's lately become obsessed with rubber bands, and can pinch them off the floor. So...
What have we started with?
1. Letting him self feed fruit pieces with his fingers.
OOOOoooohhhh the patience it takes! Ignatius was so excited, he just kept grabbing the peach pieces, squeezing them between his thumb and index finger, and throwing them around the table, chair, floor, body... . We were busy "rescueing" the poor pieces of peach. Finally, after the excitment died down, Ignatius started feeding himself...but with chunk after chunk of peach and storing them in his cheek cavity! Talk about no self restraint. It wasn't until the last few pieces that he ate piece by piece.
Our second trial was with apples...and it was no better. Sigh.
2. Letting him hold the spoon, along with us, as we feed him his meals.
We were hoping he'd be able to practise the spoon-holding grip, the mouthing the spoon and taking out the spoon with the food IN the mouth. As usual, PATIENCE required! He didn't do too badly at holding the spoon as we held it, and following the motion from the bowl to the mouth. He certainly didn't do badly at all in mouthing the spoon. What he did after though, was to turn the spoon, concave side downwards, presumably (we thought) to get the food onto his tongue. However, he has not mastered the art of having the food remain in his mouth as he takes out the spoon. He's still at the stage whereby the food comes out with the spoon. We suspect this is aggravated by the fact that the concave part of the spoon drags the food out as it comes out. So, more scraping of food off Ignatius' clothes and highchair. Also, he still doesn't realise that the spoon needs to go back to the bowl to "refill", and that it doesn't get "refilled" by being waved about in the air!
So, that's our journey so far... Much more to go! Stay tuned...
