Utensils...How did you introduce them?

My LO's feed themselves everything except for yogurt, oatmeal, and cereal (that's where I'm still useful). I'd like them to start feeding themselves. If I give them a spoon or fork, they usually just play with it. I'll demonstrate repeatedly how to use each one. DS sorta gets it; I'll put yogurt on his spoon, then he'll grasp the spoon with both hands and feed himself. DD just grips the spoon/fork in one hand and proceeds to eat her meal with her other hand. Or if I fork something, like pasta, on her fork she'll examine it, pick the pasta off with her fingers, and eat it. I find this very cute and amusing :wub:

Just curious to know how you taught your LO's how to use utensils and if you have any tips to share. Thanks!

 

Keep giving one and they will get it. We don't even eat in front of the kids most of the time but they've mostly figured it out.

 

Practice, practice, practice! We started with a spoon first. I gave them a tub of pudding (vanilla of course :lol: ) and let them go to town. We did this several times. I would sit with them and sort of try and show them how to use it.

When we moved onto forks, I would position their hands on the fork and then say out loud "PUSH" while stabbing a piece of food. I over exaggerated the move so they would catch on, and they did.

It does take time, it does make a horrible mess, but it's worth it in the end. :good:

 

I love the ideas. for us, they haven't mastered actually using the spoon to get the food on it... but I 'load' the spoon w/oatmeal & yogurt mixture and they can both get it to their mouths - with both hands... so I'm sure I need to progress to the next step of them being able to load the spoons.

I think the pudding cups or something small like that sounds like a good idea, there is a small space to be able to load the spoon with and I think it would give them success to understand how it works... I might even be able to do that with putting their cereal in a sippy cup w/o the lid on ... it might help b/c it has handles too?

I've made it a 2 step process... they know how to eat from the loaded spoon and now I need to get them to load the spoon themselves...

good luck.

 

Mine are still pretty bad with the spoon but do well with the fork. We just offered the fork at every meal and would show them how to do it. Now my DD asks for her "fork" and makes sure that her brother gets his. We are still working with spoons.

 

My boys took forever with the spoon but the fork was an instant hit. I said, "POKE!" while I was stabbing the food and they repeated. They then wanted to try to eat absolutely everything with a fork (hilarious to watch with Cheerios because they'd get one once in a while and that would be enough to keep them trying). I think it's one of those things that if you just offer and wait a while, they'll get there. OH, and my guys found the baby forks incredibly frustrating because the blunt tynes don't work well at all. I gave them real forks and just watched closely to be sure they weren't getting too crazy. They were much happier with those!

 

We give our boys forks to play with near the end of the meal. That way they've gotten enough to eat with their fingers, and if they just mess around with the forks they've at least been fed. Then we tell them "fork it" or hold the fork with them and push down into a bit of food. If they get food on their fork, we cheer. We then say "put it in your mouth", and if they do, we cheer again. Sometimes they will fork the food then take it off with their fingers and eat it, or sometimes we have to fork it for them, and then they put the fork in their mouths. Occasionally they'll get the whole thing down themselves.

Right now they're just practicing, and we try to make it fun for them. We do use baby forks, but they're thin plastic so even though they're blunt, they can push easily into a soft bit of food. We use these and they work pretty well.

Now if I can just stop them from having "fork wars" when they're finished eating...