holding utensils and using plates>

when did u all start this and how?

 

I started giving my boys a spoon and fork at meals around 12.5-13 months. They are decent with a fork now, but still not so great with the spoon (unless it's something that sticks to the spoon (like yogurt), they tend to lose it before it gets to their mouth). And really, they prefer to use their fingers most of the time still.

As for plates, we haven't really done that yet. I give them their food in bowls and sit there with them (because otherwise it all gets dumped on the floor for our dogs or flung all over the place). If I can't sit with them, I will put food on their trays without bowls. I figure I will keep using bowls for awhile instead of plates because it is easier for them to keep the food in there.

 

I started with spoons around a year and bowls around 13 months. I started with plates and plastic baby forks later (around 14-15 months maybe). I find the baby forks are hard to use so I waited until they were less likely to use them as weapons and have started giving them our small dessert forks with meals just recently and only under supervision.

My girls are awesome at eating anything in a bowl with a spoon now so that's how they eat most meals (I throw everything together in a bowl and they go to town). It was VERY messy to start with but didn't take too long for them to get the hang of it and they LOVE it!

 

I started with spoons and forks (the plastic take and toss kind) at 12 months. My kids got using a fork a lot faster then using a spoon. I think I started with plates and bowls around 15 months or so. With the utensils, we would show them how we held them and let them watch us use them and then let them do what they what with them (at first it was to play and hang on them for dear life).
Plates and bowls were used when we took the tray off of their booster seats and pulled them up to the table. Less of a chance of them thinking it was fun to dump the plate and bowl.

 

I started with finger foods on plates at about 12 months. As long as there's food on it, they won't throw them. We tried spoons at 13 months, but it didn't go well. I waited until 15 months, and as PPs have said, my girls are better with forks than spoons. It's still messy and they prefer to eat with their fingers. I still give a majority of their meals on plates or in a bowl with a utensil. I figure they'll get the hang of it faster of they're used to having them for most meals.

 

I also started giving my guys forks at about 12 months; mostly they'd just play with them, but sometimes I'd help them "fork" a piece of food and they'd get it to their mouths. Spoons were rough for a *long* time, and even now at almost 3, my guys still dump more cereal than they eat most days.

I usually just put food on their high-chair trays until they turned 2. On their 2nd birthday I put them in boosters at the table, and gave them (unbreakable) plates to eat off of. :good:

 

I've been giving them fork/spoon since they were 14 months old. I tried the plate too, but they were dumping its contents on the floor/table until recently.
We are now 21 monhts old and they are working very well with the fork/plate and making good progress with the spoon as well.

 

My guys have been pretty good with the spoons and forks for a while now.. we started giving them around 13-14 months and they were pretty good by about 18 months. They're still terrible with plates though; first order of business is to dump their plate or bowl onto the table and then eat. My next goal is to stop the dumping.