First Foods & Toddler Table Manners- With Feeding Littles

So when you hear the term baby-led weaning you immediately think of letting your baby stop breast or bottle feeding. But what this actually refers to is how you introduce solid foods. So, I like to call it baby-led feeding just to change the terminology and help us understand it better. It essentially means that you are giving babies food that they can pick up, bring to their own mouths put in their own mouths, chew and swallow eventually. And it’s a little different than what you be might used to if you’re used to what’s more of a traditional feeding route where you use puréed baby food and jarred foods and you put the spoon in the baby’s mouth. This is them doing the job themselves and then actually starting with a whole bunch of safe textures so that they can learn how to chew and swallow and start right away on table foods. So the first food for a child doing baby-led weaning would be like, a strip of avocado or a strip of chicken or something that’s soft and fork-tender.

Meghan McNamee, MPH, RDN

When it comes to choking, what I want to say to people who are worried about choking is, you’re a good parent for worrying about your child’s safety. You’re always a good parent for worrying about their safety. So, a lot of parents feel almost ashamed or like they’re holding their children back. It causes such anxiety for them. I want to assure you that your baby will pick up on that anxiety. So it is important to do something that makes you feel good and makes you feel comfortable. With that being said, we have no evidence that baby-led weaning increases a child’s risk of choking as long as choking hazard foods aren’t served. And choking hazard foods would be really hard foods, like a whole nut or a chip or a small bone. They’d be really round, smooth foods like a cherry, a cherry tomato or a grape. Or a really sticky food, like a glob of peanut butter or a gummy bear or something like that. As long as we’re serving soft, fork-tender foods, we have no evidence that it actually increases choking risks. In fact, it does actually help your baby learn from the beginning lateralization of the tongue. Bringing the food to the side of their mouth so that they can chew with those back gums and swallow. So it does promote chewing. And it does promote that kind of normal oral development. Sometimes when we get into it, some babies are really struggling with that gagging phase, which is normal. In those cases, we have our clients step back a little bit and try some purees on loaded spoons because sometimes babies are struggling with this. But, I like to reassure parents that it is OK to be worried and it is OK to do this at your own pace. But also to be reassured that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of families around the world are trying this, if not, loving it for a reason. And sometimes you just need to see it to understand it a bit better.

Meghan McNamee, MPH, RDN