Friday, April 17, 2009

Utensils?

So when the hell are we supposed to expect a toddler to use their utensils?  Should I still be feeding her yogurt with a spoon, or should I just give it to her and let her go to town?  Because, yeah, if that's the case, we need to rework our whole morning routine because she will be eating NEKKID.

We give her a spoon or fork every night, and no longer just put her food on the highchair tray (for some reason that offends her now).  But she can't really seem to master the whole, scoop up the food and get it in your mouth, thing.

Something I should work harder with her on?  Or just keep giving her the fork/spoon and eventually she'll get it.  To be honest - it just makes mealtime sooooooo much longer.  And then she gets annoyed and just eats with her hands again anyways.  Or stops eating altogether.  Because really, an hour at dinner?  I'd be annoyed too.

So - question to the peanut gallery... what did you do?  Is it something to even really be bothered about?

xxoo.S

3 comments:

Vone said...

I wouldn't stress about using utensils yet. I would give them to her to try but I didn't worry if Lilo didn't use them. She's pretty good now but there are times she still uses her hands.
I most the time offer Isla utensils, she tries to use them for a bit. Yogurt is messy so it depends on time if I let her feed herself.

Deb said...

I agree with Vone. Give them to her but let her figure them out on her own schedule. Austin still uses his hands from time-to-time and I have to remind him to use his fork/spoon.

As for Alex, I don't give her utensils. Heck, anytime I try to give her a plate with food on it, she proceeds to dump all the food onto the tray and hand the plate back to me!

Carly Foster said...

How old is Maddie again?

We used to give Lucy her own utensils, but feed her at the same time. That way there's no battle over them, you get food into the hole, and she gets to make a mess and learn all at the same time.

I'm so glad Lucy can feed herself now. I remember how long feeding used to take, and how much cold food I ate (I HATE that!). We gave Alice cereal for the first time today, so now it starts all over!

Also, we never did the naked feeding thing, because I didn't want to set a precedent with that, or give a signal that it was OK to make a gigantic mess each time. We invested in some jumbo absorbent bibs, and went from there.