At what age can a baby eat by himself? How to make a baby love eating?

Learning to eat by yourself is a stage that your baby must go through during his growth. So, as a parent, how should you teach your baby to eat? At what age can your baby eat by himself? How can you make your baby love eating? Let's learn these tips together~

The golden period for babies to eat independently

Feeding during infancy plays an important role in the formation of a person's appetite and eating habits. In order for children to grow up healthily, mothers should train their babies to eat independently from an early age.

The so-called golden period is the average period of development for most children. It is just a suggestion and cannot be absolutely copied. Every child is a special individual, and some develop earlier or later. Mothers should choose personalized feeding time according to their children's development. To cultivate babies to eat independently, mothers need careful observation and patience.

1. Bud stage: 10 months

After 10 months, the baby begins to show a strong interest in tableware.

Babies over 10 months old always want to do things by themselves and like to play with tableware. Every time you feed them, they like to grab the tableware from your hands. This is a good time to train your baby to eat by himself. The independent choice of food and eating by yourself are a sign of the baby's early personality formation, and are very helpful for exercising coordination and independence.

2. Golden period: 12 to 18 months

After the child is one year old, it is the actual induction period for the child to feed himself, and the period between 12 to 18 months can be regarded as the "golden induction period"; because during this period, the child's hand-eye coordination ability develops rapidly, and if given proper guidance, it will be twice the result with half the effort.

The different stages of a baby's eating

Children should eat at regular times and should be quiet and silent while eating. When children start to eat with a spoon, you should be patient and it will take longer to eat. Don't keep saying to them, "Hurry up, don't dawdle!"

When the child is still on the infant diet, it is best for him to eat before or after the whole family eats; when he eats the same food as his brother or sister, let them eat together; when he is not yet able to sit at the table to eat, do not let him eat with adults. Otherwise, scolding words such as "Don't get your clothes dirty when eating" and "Hold your spoon" will affect his appetite and involve the whole family. Eating is a happy thing for children, don't disturb him with constant warnings. Educational words should be said before or after meals, not during meals.

To help you make reasonable demands on your child's eating, here are the different stages that children between four months and four years old go through when it comes to eating.

Four months: The child will grab the bottle with his hands, but will neither take it nor pull it out of his mouth; he will eat pureed vegetables when his mother feeds him with a spoon.

Six months: The mother can feed the baby milk with a cup, and he can sit on his mother's lap to eat.

Seven months: The first time a child can sit in a chair to eat is a big win for both the child and the mother. Some mothers put their children in a chair too early, but they are not comfortable sitting.

Nine months: If the child is still using the bottle to feed, he can hold it, put it in his mouth, and pull it out of his mouth after eating. At the beginning, you have to watch him eat so that he doesn't eat too fast and gasp for air. If you give him a biscuit, he will use five fingers to take it and happily chew it, of course, it will make his clothes dirty.

One year old: The child can pick up biscuits with his thumb and index finger and eat them cleanly, which makes traveling very convenient; he can take things out of his mouth, so the mother can rest assured when giving him a piece of bread; he can also distinguish between dishes and does not like to eat certain dishes.

One year and three months: The child will use his fingers to point to his favorite dishes; can hold a metal cup with two hands and try to use a spoon, but often holds it upside down.

One and a half years old: The child can eat food in pieces with a spoon and can hold a glass. Glass is not as easy to hold as metal cups, so he often breaks them. He also often likes to eat by himself, but he gets tired after a while and needs help from adults.

One year and nine months: The child can eat all kinds of food, but gets his whole body dirty.

Two years old: The child has made great progress. Before this, the child had to wear a napkin when eating, but now after eating, the napkin is almost not dirty. But you have to know that he may eat well one day and make his clothes dirty the next day. In this aspect, as in other aspects, he has not yet fully mastered the method.

Note: For whatever reason, when a child wants someone to take care of him, he will pretend that he can't eat and let others feed him like a baby. When the child is spoiled and asks you to feed him, don't refuse him with the excuse that he is already grown up. In addition, after eating a few spoons, he may be willing to eat by himself again. However, he sometimes wants to rely on you.

At this point the child can hold the metal cup with one hand.

The child's habits and hobbies are also reflected in the dining table: every meal is carried out in the same way, and all the tableware is placed in the old place, such as metal cups, napkins, etc. This has almost become a habit, but you should not be surprised. For children of this age, this is a very common phenomenon.

Two and a half years old: The child has discovered the knife and fork and can use it to poke food into pieces; he is also given a spoon when eating pureed vegetables; he wants to use the spoon in the dish, but has difficulty. Don't stop him from learning, he will feel very proud when he learns. The sooner he is allowed to practice, the sooner he will learn.

Three years old: From this time on, the child can eat well at the table. You can take him to a friend's house or to a restaurant, and he will not hinder others because of his clumsiness. The child can also drink tea because he knows how to hold the handle of the cup.

Four years old: The child can use a table knife to cut buttered bread or cheese, but he is not strong enough to cut meat and hard fruit, and he cannot do it before the age of seven. He loves to help adults set the tablecloth and prepare food.

There are tricks to make your baby happy when eating

There are four reasons why babies don't like to eat: one is food accumulation; two is monotonous meals; three is dry mouth; four is not hungry. So, how to solve it?

First point: Don't worry if your baby has indigestion. You can go to a Chinese doctor to get some Chinese medicine to dissolve indigestion. The best way is to pinch the indigestion: let the baby lie on the bed, bend the index fingers of both hands slightly, align the front half of the index fingers with the thumbs, pinch the skin on both sides of the middle of the lower end of the spine (tail), and move up along the midline of the spine to the neck. Do this six times in total. Do this while pinching and lifting for the third to fifth times. This method is very effective and can be used when the baby does not have indigestion to promote digestion.

Second point: monotonous meals will make babies bored, and the intake of nutrition will not be enough. Mothers can change the way they eat for each meal, such as three meals a day, one meal is eggs: steamed eggs, boiled eggs, egg drop soup, etc., the second meal is meat: there are many kinds of meat, such as lean meat, fish, shrimp, chicken, and there are many ways to cook each kind of meat; the third meal is vegetarian, and you can cook different meals for a month. In this way, the baby will naturally like to eat.

The third point is dry mouth. Some parents neglect to give their babies water because they don’t like to drink water. If they don’t like to drink water, they can drink fruit juice or vegetable juice, starting from strong to weak, so that they can gradually adapt to boiled water.

The last point is to refuse snacks. Many mothers are afraid that their babies will be hungry, so they feed their babies snacks in different ways all the time, which naturally makes the babies dislike eating.

How to make your baby love eating

Start from infancy

Many children rarely or never come into contact with bitter or sour foods during infancy, so they are extremely uncomfortable with such foods when they reach toddlerhood. Therefore, consciously exposing your baby to bitter or sour foods during infancy can prevent them from developing picky eating habits in the future. For example, add fish soup containing a small amount of onion and ginger, rice vinegar noodle soup, vegetable soup containing a little pepper, etc.

Parents should set a good example

Parents should set a good example for their children by not being picky eaters. When eating with children, parents should avoid saying what is delicious and what is not delicious, otherwise it will imprint bad habits of "like to eat" and "don't like to eat" in the children's minds.

Cooking with more care

When cooking, you should make sure that the food has good color, aroma and taste to arouse the child's interest in the food. You can also mix the food that the child likes with the food that the child doesn't like very much. For example, if a child doesn't like to eat vegetables, parents can chop the vegetables and put them in porridge or rice for the child to eat.

Know how to guide

Parents should consciously cultivate and educate their children to eat a balanced diet of meat and vegetables and to eat everything on the table. For children who are stubborn in their picky eating habits, parents should not force them to eat food they don't like, otherwise it will cause a rebellious mentality.

Create a dining atmosphere

Avoid scolding or beating children at the table. Children with picky eating habits can eat together because of their different picky eating habits. When they see other children enjoying the dishes they don't like, they will try them. A beautiful environment can increase children's appetite. For example, an orange-yellow eating environment can help change children's picky eating habits.

It is worth noting that for some children suffering from chronic diseases such as anemia, hepatitis, zinc deficiency, etc., they often have picky eating habits. At this time, parents should take these children to the hospital for diagnosis and treatment to cure their children's picky eating habits from the source.