Early Feeding Skills

Considerations:

• Highchair/Supportive seat - Find a chair that offers your child adequate support so they can maintain a seated posture. 

  • • If needed, add towels or blankets at the sides to help prevent slouching or leaning to the side or forward. If a child is working too hard on sitting, it is harder to also coordinate using their mouth muscles to eat

    • A highchair allows you to be face to face with your child while they are eating, and helps to lay the foundation for healthy eating habits

    • Being seated rather than moving around while eating lowers the risk of choking

• Developmental Level - Feeding according to developmental level rather than the child's age is important to ensure that you are offering food that is safe and manageable. Just like we can't run before we can walk, we can't expect to go from bottle feeding/nursing to chewing. 

• Co-Feeding - Infants are not expected to be able to get their full nutrition by self-feeding until 18-24 months. This means they require assistance with spoon feeding or finger feeding in order to ensure they are taking in adequate volumes of food. 

  • • Allow your child to hold a spoon while you feed them to give them some control.

    • You may take turns taking bites - baby feeds themselves a bite, you feed them a bite

• Repeated Exposures to tastes and textures - When children are first learning to eat, it is common for them to make funny faces, especially when trying a food with a new taste or texture. 

  • • Avoid drawing too much attention to the faces/reaction. 

    • Continue to offer and expose your child to the food in a low-pressure way. It can take many exposures to a food before accepting it. 

• Embrace the Mess! - Learning to eat can be messy! But, allowing your child to feel, play and explore the food with their hands is an important part of the journey.