Giving babies "slippery" fruits?

I want to give the babies small pieces of banana, cantaloupe, etc for finger food/snacks, but when I do, they get frustrated because they are not able to get a hold of them easily. Any trick to this or will it come with more time and practice on their parts?

 

I cut them & then tossed them with wheat germ or crushed Cheerios, puffs, etc. It made them a little less slippery & easier to pick up.

 

I think if you just keep on giving them the fruit, eventually they will get the hang of it. Sometimes I will pick up the fruit and put it to their mouths-that seems to help-especially if they are just playing and not knowing what to do with it!

Also-you could try a larger piece of banana-that they could possibly hold-with you sitting right there.

 

With E & E we had these feeders. They were great when we first started slippery finger foods, they could get the idea of putting the food in their mouths but it was much easier to hold. I found banana was clogged up in the net a bit, but things like melon, pear, peach, mango etc worked fine.

The other thing I would say is what shape/size are you cutting the friut into? Mine seemed to find it a lot easier if I cut things into strips rather than chunks, that way they could hold the piece with their whole hand and have a bit sticking out the end to bite. Bananas will split along their seed lines into three strips which are just the right size and then you can just cut the length you want, 1 1/2-2 inches was a good size for us.
I also found that letting them pick slippy things up from the palm of my hand was easier for them than having to pick them up from a plate/tray.

Good luck!

 

Yep I used puffs all the time since they were right there on the counter, and cheap! I crushed them in a ziploc bag, added the fruit and tossed, then put the fruit on their trays. Made my fingers a gross mess, but it worked!

 

I never figured out a good way (I tried the Cheerios thing but just wound up with bits of Cheerio mush mixed in with the slippery fruit -- clearly I wasn't doing it right :laughing: ), but they got better at it as they got older. Mine weren't doing finger foods much until 9 months or so anyway. I also did as Zoe suggested, and cut things into slightly bigger pieces.

 

Like pp mentioned, we used the mesh feeders.