Monday 9 December 2013

BLW: Master of the Spoon

It has been a while and, as I was observing Millie eating at the weekend, I thought it was time for an update on BLW progress. Millie is 15.5 months now.

I was observing Millie eat as I had noticed that her spoon control had not only improved significantly in the last couple of months but she can now correct a spoon if not in a good feeding/handling position and can recognise when it has food on he underneath. She will usually try hard to use her spoon in the first instance and will only resort to using her fingers after several failed attempts. The spoon is still her preferred utensil as forks and knives are more for bashing and playing with. Haha, how does that sound? I let my child play with knives!

Actually, on that topic, I kind of do. Well, I’m not so strict about the ‘no licking the knife’ rule that most people have. I will teach her what is a sharp knife and it will be some time before I let her use a sharp knife. It is impossible for her to cut herself on the usual dinner knives. I wonder whether this rule came about in days where it was all sharp knives cutting through hunks of meat? I know it isn’t polite table manners but she’ll learn those in time as she develops in her feeding/eating skills like Callum has learnt his table manners. In fact, shhhh don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I lick the knife too! I know, shocking!

I’m much more relaxed about her eating what she instinctively chooses from the plates I’m offering rather than pushing certain foods on her and stressing. With Callum, shortly after he started nursery we started to mistrust his instincts and worried about how little vegetables he was getting but much of that was down to the repetitive and not particularly nutritional meals he was given at nursery. And, as has been said of children’s ‘natural’ eating habits, when left to their own choices, foods go in and out of favour quite frequently.  You’ve just got to keep offering them – especially while they are still quite young. Also, doing so positively so as not to draw attention to some foods as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

When we first started weaning Millie, peppers and cherry tomatoes were her favourite. She would also love chomping on a roasted carrot. Over time, she has discarded (quite literally, on the floor) these previous favourites and peas and sweetcorn became her preferred choice of vegetable. Then, at the weekend, when faced with a plate containing cabbage, peas and carrots, it was the peas she was spitting out and the carrot she picked up and happily munched through. She has often turned her nose up at mashed potato but couldn’t get enough of it on Sunday.

Another firm favourite was Weetabix but nursery have said she is no longer so keen – however, that’s understandable if she has it day in, day out. Although, what I did find funny was how the manager came up to me all proud and said

"I’ve found a way to get her to eat her breakfast…letting her feed herself!”

“Exactly!” I said, “That is because we followed the BLW approach when we weaned her, she has been feeding herself from the start!”

I had explained this to her key worker when she started and emphasised it on a couple of occasions but the manager is not her keyworker and she covers in the baby room when they haven’t enough staff or to cover shift changes.

At least this nursery provide a varied and nutritional menu – I’m often quite jealous of the meals they have!

Strangely, Millie definitely seems slower with her spoon control than Callum was but she probably has a much wider variety of flavours.

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