Babies will try to grab food by themselves starting at seven or eight months old. However, at this stage, it is not suitable to let the baby eat independently, because the baby's complementary food is too thin and soft and difficult to grab. However, the baby can be allowed to grab food. , experience the fun of eating.
When the baby is older and can eat slightly harder and shaped complementary foods, we can try to let her eat independently. The premise is that we are mentally prepared to clean up. Otherwise, you will give up the idea after trying it once. Because it is the first time to eat independently, it usually takes half an hour to eat and one hour to clean.
In addition, there are other benefits for babies to eat independently:
1. The most intuitive benefit is that mothers can temporarily free their hands and enjoy the time of eating with their babies. In families with babies, what you often see is that everyone is eating with gusto, and only the mother is fighting hard on the front line of feeding the baby. When the baby is finished eating, everyone else has almost finished eating, and one person is the last. The feeling of eating is really not good;
2. Baby eating independently is also a great early education activity, because the baby must achieve high coordination of hands, eyes, and mouth to complete this task. The coordination of these three requires overall control by the brain, which is beneficial to the development of the baby's brain and upper limb muscles.
3. Cultivate your baby to eat independently from an early age. It is easy to develop good eating habits in the child, avoid the situation where the child cannot eat independently when he is older, or catch up on feeding, and reduce the occurrence of serious picky eaters.
There are so many benefits for babies to eat independently. So, at what age is suitable for babies to eat independently? Doctors generally recommend taking it after one year of age.
Coco is about one year and three months old and eats independently. Cola is eleven and a half months old and eats independently. She eats food on her face, head, legs, floor, bib, dining chair, and everything she touches. But when I saw that she was eating with great concentration and relish, and the food was so delicious with her small mouth, I still refrained from interrupting her. You can see the dining scene through pictures, which can be 100% restored.
