Contents:
- Medical Video: How to Avoid Picky Eaters - Stanford Children's Health
- Why is it important to teach children to eat alone?
- Stages teach children to eat alone
- 1. Give children food that can be held by the hand (finger food)
- 2. Introduce the child with a spoon as a tool for eating
Medical Video: How to Avoid Picky Eaters - Stanford Children's Health
Learning to eat yourself is an important development for you. For adults, eating alone is an easy thing to do, but children need to learn to eat well. Teaching children to eat on their own may not be an easy thing. But, feeding children constantly until they are big is also not good. This will only hamper its development.
Why is it important to teach children to eat alone?
Eating is a basic need for children to meet their nutritional needs to support their development and growth. The skill of children eating themselves is a very important stage of children's development.
Food activities involve many abilities that must be mastered by children. Many stages must be passed by the child to be able to deliver food to his mouth. First, the child must see the food, take the food by hand, then bring it to the mouth, adjust to the location of his mouth, open his mouth, chew to swallow food.
After the child can eat by hand, the child then develops the ability to eat with a spoon and fork. Children may often drop the food so messy. However, learning to hold a spoon is one way to develop children's fine motor skills.
In addition to developing many abilities of children, eating alone also involves many feelings and sensory abilities. And, develop the ability of children to be independent, which is needed for the life of the next child.
Stages teach children to eat alone
When you start introducing children with solid food, children may have begun to show their desire to eat alone. When you feed it with a spoon, he may want to hold the spoon too. When your child sees food, the child may want to take it and put it in his mouth. This is a good start, you just need to support it more.
1. Give children food that can be held by the hand (finger food)
The first stage, you can start by giving the child food that he can hold. This can train how children hold food and bring food to their mouth and eat it. Foods that can be used as finger food is a food that is easily held by children and soft textured. Examples, such as cut apples, small cut papaya, steamed broccoli, steamed carrots, boiled potatoes, and so on.
You can start this stage when the child reaches 8 months. Or, some children may be able to start faster, around the age of 6 months when he has been introduced to solid food, has been able to pick up objects around him, has been able to sit alone, and has been able to chew and remove food. Remember, developments can vary between children.
2. Introduce the child with a spoon as a tool for eating
After the child can eat alone with finger food, You can take the child to eat using a spoon. The stages of introducing children with spoons to eat can begin around the age of 13-15 months. This might be different for each child.
Although the child eats alone with a spoon must make it dirty because the food falls, but allowing the child to eat with a spoon at an earlier age can encourage him to learn to develop his own eating abilities. You may feel irritated when the child always drops his food while eating alone with a spoon, but this is part of the child's development.
At the age of 18 months, the child may be more skilled at using a spoon to feed himself. And, at the age of 2 years or 3 years, children may be able to use a spoon to eat without falling. You may only need to help cut small pieces of children's food so the child can take it easily.
