When to teach children to eat alone?
To understand if the time has come to teach children to eat by themselves, it is necessary to "simply" observe them.
There are many small signs that can make us understand if it is ready: does it show itself curious about food? Do you try to grab the spoon when you take it? He puts his hands on the plate and tries to take to his mouth what he can by himself? If the answer to all these questions is yes, the child is ready to do his experiments to learn to eat alone.
When weaning begins and the children begin to take an interest in handling food, the parents react in different ways: there are those that allow the little ones to do all sorts of experiments, regardless of the chaos that will be generated; those who are permissive only half and those who would be willing to do anything to keep from getting too dirty.
To teach children to eat alone, it takes a lot of patience and it must be taken into account that, for a certain number of months, the area around the high chair will be invaded by food residues and that, often, the baby will be washed by head on foot after every meal.
The child learns to eat, just as he learns to walk and perform many actions, only if he is allowed to try . It is experimenting, and therefore, in this case, getting dirty and smearing the unbreakable, that children will soon learn to eat alone and, above all, they will develop a natural relationship and "friendship" with food.
Read also how to educate children to eat well
How to do?
The first few times you can try to give the child a spoon while you feed it with another spoon, allowing it to slip it into the dish, obtaining what it can and taking what you can to your mouth.
Obviously, we must take into account that, in doing so, the child could get very dirty and that the food could get everywhere; it could spill the dish or shake the full spoon spreading residues everywhere. To limit damage, we recommend:
- put a few sheets of newspaper under the high chair, in order to make cleaning easier once the child has finished eating;
- use high chairs with a plastic top, easy to wash or, alternatively, use plastic place mats to rest on the shelf;
- use silicone or plastic bibs, which can then be simply washed under water;
- get a napkin to clean the cleanable already during the meal;
- remove all that we don't want to get dirty from the "at risk" area: delicate curtains and carpets, just to give an example;
- but above all, arm yourself with so much patience and good will.
At the beginning, children must be able to grab food as they can and, that is, often with their hands. They should be allowed to explore, experiment and mess around if we want them to learn to eat on their own and develop a good relationship with food.
The first few times, however, you will have to feed it yourself and it will probably be more of the food that will end up on the floor and on the clothes than the one that will eat. Then, as the child really begins to eat alone. The age at which this happens is subjective .
At what age can children really eat alone?
It depends on the children. In general, however, around 12-18 months the baby is able to consume at least part of the meal on its own.
Usually at two years old children are able to eat alone with cutlery, even without getting too dirty.
Obviously, the acquisition of a child's ability to eat alone also depends on how many experiments we allowed him to do; if we have clipped the wings for fear that it would dirty too much, it is very likely that this conquest will arrive later.
