Views: 273 Author: Vickey Publish Time: 2023-12-29 Origin: Site
Learning to feed yourself is a significant developmental milestone for your infant during the parenting process, but parents who have raised their own children understand that feeding their child is a "big job." The child is the man's father, as the Chinese proverb states. Good habits are something that should be formed early in life and can last a lifetime. Teaching a baby to feed himself should also begin early.
In order to gradually teach and enhance their baby's ability to eat on their own, parents should intentionally utilize their baby's sensory, cognitive, behavioural, and motor development.
When babies begin to eat by themselves, it indicates that they have transitioned from the "feeding" period to the independent eating stage. They begin to learn to eat independently by progressively accepting a wider variety of foods.
Newborns will begin to consciously grab food at the age of six months. Mothers and fathers should fully acknowledge and support this behaviour so that newborns can understand the structure of food as soon as possible and develop a greater interest in eating. Additionally, you can produce more food chunks for your infant that are appropriate for grasping, including bread slices, potato sticks, fruit bits, etc., by using complimentary food cutters. Some babies will begin to mimic adults and attempt to eat with a spoon around the age of 10 or 12 months. But because they are not skilled enough, babies frequently overturn bowls or feed rice into their faces.
It is important to use special dining chairs for babies at this time, add complementary foods from the table, and set rules: on the dining table and chairs can eat, off the dining table and chairs can no longer eat. These are the first steps in developing appropriate dining habits.
To help the baby practice, parents can select a dinner plate for the infant that is safe and healthy, with rounded edges that make it simple for the child to hold onto the fork and spoon, making it easier for the baby to put rice in their mouths. After eating successfully a few times in a row, the baby will feel quite accomplished and motivated to eat, and they will love to eat energetically from that point on!
A baby's great curiosity may prompt them to ask to eat with their own hands, as the exquisite cartoon shape and vibrant colours will immediately activate their visual organs.
Once a baby reaches one year old, they will start to learn how to use cutlery. Certain cutlery is designed to support a baby's hand growth and encourage flexible finger movement, which helps with hand, eye, and mouth coordination exercises.
Using baby-friendly dinnerware sets encourages babies to take the initiative to clean their dishes and return items to their lunchboxes based on their shape, which is a great way to help them form disciplined and hygienic habits.
You can begin teaching your infant how to use utensils at about one year old. To enable a baby to put food in his mouth on his own, parents must put food on a spoon and give it to the child. Once you have established this awareness, you must let the baby try feeding themselves. You must also avoid appearing overly eager to "help" and instead use simple words like "fork" and "eat" to cue the baby to take action. Additionally, you should refrain from using complicated expressions that could distract the baby from their task and instead offer encouragement when the baby feeds themselves.
Children use tableware every day, and if something goes wrong, it's like "feeding poison" to your child on a daily basis.
As everyone is aware, glass is essentially no longer used in babies' tableware. Even heat-resistant reinforced glass has a weight that is truly unsuitable for children to hold and place, despite the fact that glass is stable, non-toxic, safer, easy to clean, and resistant to wear and tear. Stainless steel, silicone, plant fibre, and non-breakable plastic have gradually replaced glass in these applications.
Since silicone is rubber rather than plastic and can endure temperatures beyond 250 degrees, it is used as a raw material for infant items and is also drop-resistant, waterproof, non-stick, and resistant to chemical reactions with other substances. Baby silicone tableware that is suitable for food use is free of BPA, phthalates, and dense amines. Typically, a baby's first spoon is a food-grade silicone soft-headed spoon with a soft feel that won't irritate their sensitive gums, good elasticity that resists deformation, resistance to chewing by the infant, and material safety that ensures no toxic compounds leak during boiling sterilization. When choosing silicone tableware for your infant, be sure to pay close attention to product qualifications and safety certificates.
Pick a spoon with the appropriate depth, handle, and belly size.
A baby's mouth size is preferable. An infant's mouth that is too wide or too small can make it difficult to feed them, which can reduce their efficiency and patience.
Not too deep, as this will make it difficult for the infant to ingest the food that is within and increase the likelihood that the next scoop spoon may spill. Food that is too shallow may come off easily, frustrating people and making them lose patience and confidence to attempt it again.
You can choose the spoon handle's length and form based on your baby's needs. In general, a spoon handle with a specific curve will be easier for the infant to hold.
It is not required to bend the head in any way. It's acceptable to use a regular spoon if the infant struggles to use the curved head.
A fork works well with long, solid foods like noodles and several other shaped foods.
When a baby is first learning to move steadily and precisely, you can choose fork food portions with serrated edges since the food will be harder to fall on and increase your chances of success.
You can select a deeper bowl or a suction bowl. A bowl edge is preferable since it not only makes it easier for the baby to scoop food, but it also prevents the baby from scooping food after picking out flies.
You can picture the frantic situations and the agony of cleaning when you first start using a fork and spoon. We can also work on some preliminary tasks. As the weather cools off, washing a single load of clothes still takes a lot of effort, so use silicone placemats and put a silicone bib on your child.
Firstly, using cutlery may be broadly broken down into two stages: using a fork to scoop food and then placing it in the mouth.
Since some newborns struggle with the first step initially, we can utilize the disassembly method and start the baby on the second step.
Two spoons should be ready. Use one to scoop the appropriate food, then give the spoon to the infant and allow them to put it in their mouth. Reclaim the empty spoon from the infant after they've finished eating, then pass the other spoon with food on it.
It is much simpler to just give your infant a suction cup dish with a little food and an appropriate spoon or fork and let him or her learn on their own if they can complete both processes to some extent.
Allowing the baby to utilize it in a way that we do not consider conventional and allowing them to fail is perhaps the most crucial aspect.
In the early phases, certain behaviours, including slamming and scooping half and missing half, are considered typical. If the baby is not interacting well, there's no need to jump to judgment, assign blame, or condemn them. Instead, let them try on their own and offer them the right encouragement to boost their confidence.
Every ability to learn and grow requires a process. As adults, we struggle to learn new things, and our hearts race with interest and anxiety. The infant, on the other hand, has been exposed to an open level of skill acquisition and has had time to refine these newly acquired abilities.
