Maryland Babies

Eating with utensils

Sorry for another food-related post, but how old was your child when you started to teach them how to use utensils to eat? How long before they could manage it without, say, flinging most of it on the ceiling? Any tips?

I just started helping DS eat with a spoon (heavily assisted) and he thinks it is the most awesome thing ever, but I see many messes in our future!

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Re: Eating with utensils

  • I started giving DD utensils about 2 months ago. At first if it was something that needed a spoon I'd help her. Now she has the hang of it and still spills stuff on her, but I'll usually take her shirt off to eat (since she won't keep a bib on). With the fork I'll pierce the food and she will sometimes pick it off the fork or pick the fork up and eat off it. She just recently has tried to pierce the food herself, but still needs a bit of help.  I'll sometimes use a spoon for regular foods to get her used to the action of eating off of a utensil.

    FWIW, she never flung food. Just try it and if he isn't ready, try again in a few weeks. 

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  • I started giving them to her around 1, but rarely helped and tried very, very hard not to comment on anything being messy, just helped if she needed it/wanted it.   She figured it out on her own.  I give her utensils for every meal now, but she still eats with her hands about 50% of the time.  She'll use a combo of hands and fork/spoon.  I still rarely comment on her use of utensils unless she's being purposely messy/gross.  She's mostly internalized wanting to be clean & neat so she tries to use utensils. 
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  • Daycare started around 15 months. I tried earlier, but she wasn't that interested. Now, she can eat yogurt with a spoon and use a fork to stab other foods (pasta, etc.). She is still hit or miss whether she uses them or not, but we do put them out at every meal. Honestly, I don;t worry about whether she uses them or not.
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  • I think we probably started to placing utensils at the table at one, but mainly it was just another thing to throw on the floor. Now that A is almost 3 she normally uses her utensils, but I still have to ask her to use her fork/spoon. She would still rather use her hands. It's a fun mess in our house.
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  • We started pretty early with D1 and she could use them by 18 months.  Now days she doesn't want to use them, she'd rather eat with her fingers. Tongue Tied
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  • Same here on the starting a while ago and still wanting to use hands to eat. I'm glad I'm not the only one! We are probably not consistent enough with asking her to use the utensils. Sometimes it's just not a battle we feel like fighting, but when she's eating yogurt with her fingers for the millionth time, I get annoyed and take it away of she doesn't use her spoon. (Actually, we just started buying the gogurt in tubes and she likes those a lot so she doesn't even need a spoon.)
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  • imageMegcheer2:
    Same here on the starting a while ago and still wanting to use hands to eat. I'm glad I'm not the only one! We are probably not consistent enough with asking her to use the utensils. Sometimes it's just not a battle we feel like fighting, but when she's eating yogurt with her fingers for the millionth time, I get annoyed and take it away of she doesn't use her spoon. (Actually, we just started buying the gogurt in tubes and she likes those a lot so she doesn't even need a spoon.)

    if it makes you feel better, DD did the yogurt w/ hands thing for awhile too (evne though she COULD do it w/ a spoon - it was just more efficient for her to do it w/ her fingers).  She'll now use a spoon for foods like that w/o being asked. 

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  • imageKathrynMD:

    imageMegcheer2:
    Same here on the starting a while ago and still wanting to use hands to eat. I'm glad I'm not the only one! We are probably not consistent enough with asking her to use the utensils. Sometimes it's just not a battle we feel like fighting, but when she's eating yogurt with her fingers for the millionth time, I get annoyed and take it away of she doesn't use her spoon. (Actually, we just started buying the gogurt in tubes and she likes those a lot so she doesn't even need a spoon.)

    if it makes you feel better, DD did the yogurt w/ hands thing for awhile too (evne though she COULD do it w/ a spoon - it was just more efficient for her to do it w/ her fingers).  She'll now use a spoon for foods like that w/o being asked. 

     Ok good! She will eat things with spoons at first, and then switch to her fingers towards the middle/end. She does it with cereal and ice cream too! Oy.  

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  • DS can't get the hang of using a spoon on his own.  He is handling a fork much better, but usually I have to fork the food and let it sit on the table, then he picks it up and eats from it.  He does try really hard to pick up the food himself.  For spoons, he just dips it into whatever and licks the spoon, it is really cute, but like you said SK, super messy.

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