Dear moms,
Can you pls share your experience and advice when can baby normally starts holding their food (eg biscuits) and eat themselves? FYI, my daughter is 10 mths old now. When I put biscuits in her hand, she’ll look at it & throw away or just playing with it. However, if I feed her, she’ll eat.
How can I train her? Now she even refuses to hold her milk/drinking bottle. Thanks in advance for sharing & your advise. 
your baby is ready to self-feed when he/she:
why don’t you try feeding your baby rice puffs and see if she likes it?
hello there,
my baby started holding food when she was about 8/9 months. I allowed her to play with her food during meal times but at the same time, feed her.
I think just let the baby play with things to encourage her/him… :clown:
Thanks for the replies and contruibutions in this topic. Which reminds me to ask parents out there about feeding topic. Okay, my baby is 6 months old already. I started feeding him rice cereal at 4 months, eventually move on the gerber 1st food. I feed him cereal and 1st food vegetable twice a day. Most of the time, he can consumed 2 packs of gerber vegetable food. My question is, is my son ready for a finger food? I always see photos of baby eating dry cheerios. i read giving finger food is good for his motor skills. He’s teething right now and I don’t know if giving him teething cracker or dry cheerio safe. I am always scared it might pose choking hazard for my little one. Help! Thanks.
No way! You can try a teething biscuit, but I would be very careful. 6 months is really very young to be giving any kind of hard foods to. Your not supposed to start cereals and baby foods until 6 months.
Short answer: They can start holding their food well before they need to be eating it.
I would say DON’T RUSH IT. 6 months especially is very very young still. Unlike learning to read earlier, there is no advantage to learning to eat solid food so early. Some of my children were still up to 95% breastfeeding at 1 year of age. I always try to think of how the design of our nature is… if we had no blenders and cereal factories (for making cheerios!), then what would we feed our babies? They would breastfeed and start with some soft fruits in the second half of their first year. As they get more teeth then they can handle more and more ‘solid’ foods. During their first year I’d say breastmilk or formula should be their primary food source. When they are bigger babies then they will take to food easily and you’ll avoid all the fuss of spit up food and so on… their digestive systems will be that much more mature. Believe me, when we finally did make ‘food’ a larger part of their diet, they learned to eat very very quickly… don’t be in a hurry.
Oh my! Nhockaday and momtomany, thanks so much for the advice. I will keep this in mind. I am so glad we have this community or support group. I am the only one here and I don’t know anyone in this place. parenting is kinda difficult for me.
My daugher was 8-9 months old when she was using her fingers to eat baby fingers food, now she is 16 months old and she can hold the spoon very well but she is still training how to get the food in to her mouth without with the spoon. I will say takes a while,she will probably do this succesfully when she is 2 years old.
You are fine, your baby is 10 months old, some babies are more interested in playing than eating, that is completely normal. Even my 16 months old still does that. It is a long process.
Sometimes when my baby desn’t eat enough in the high chair, then she goes and play with her toys I put some snacks in her small table she has around her toys and she will stop playing ,go to the small table to eat, and they go back to play and so on…Babies like some times to have evrything in the same place, food and toys …yummy. But I don’t do this really often, because she has to understand eating time=high chair. and don’t get used to eat where her toys are.
Absolutely agree with Nikki! There are still some pediatritians which would suggest starting solids early, but if you look for supporting evidence and into the practices of more prominent pediatritians and baby nutritionists who basing their theories on common sense scientific research, it all comes down to the ages-old principal, – delay introducing solids till the baby is ready. There is no need to rush in most of the ordinary circumstances ( which are 99% of cases) and all the good reasons to delay in order to help your childs body to get ready for processing solids.
There were quite a few threads lately here about it, may be we can have some good information organised in one thread for an easy reference. I studied medicine and lately also had a few in-depth discussions with child nutrition researches and a leading immunologist. There is ample evidence, that connects diabetis, obesity, severe allergies, immune disorders to routine and early introduction of solids. Granted, there are some cases when it is necessary, but in those cases, it should not be just introducing any solids, or juices, but rather a very choosy and careful approach.
And the best to start with the solids in their original state, like avocado, which is a nutritional system on its own. Rather then getting commercially made baby foods. It is very easy to steam some squash or scoop some avocado, or mix some avocado and pear or carrot. But by doing it, you will be able to give your baby nutrition without compromising their well being. Would you agree that freshly mashed squash or pear is much better then pear or squash puree from a jar, that was sitting on the shelf for some time, was preserved for freshness, homogenised, sterilised, etc…
Once the baby is older and is able to have different fruits and veggies, there are also neat things you can use to prevent your baby from choking and make it easier for the baby to hold the food. They have these little mesh sacks with handles, they look like oversized pacifiers, and you put a piece of fruit inside. It works really great for a few mommies that I’ve seen using this recently… It also helps the baby to hold it easier…
Hope it helps. 
At eight months, my son started to hold his own food. Let your son make mess and just be patient.