When should my baby start eating table food

When, What, and How to Introduce Solid Foods | Nutrition

For more information about how to know if your baby is ready to starting eating foods, what first foods to offer, and what to expect, watch these videos from 1,000 Days.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children be introduced to foods other than breast milk or infant formula when they are about 6 months old. Introducing foods before 4 months old is not recommended. Every child is different. How do you know if your child is ready for foods other than breast milk or infant formula? You can look for these signs that your child is developmentally ready.

Your child:

Sits up alone or with support.
Is able to control head and neck.
Opens the mouth when food is offered.
Swallows food rather than pushes it back out onto the chin.
Brings objects to the mouth.
Tries to grasp small objects, such as toys or food.
Transfers food from the front to the back of the tongue to swallow.

What Foods Should I Introduce to My Child First?

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that for most children, you do not need to give foods in a certain order. Your child can begin eating solid foods at about 6 months old. By the time he or she is 7 or 8 months old, your child can eat a variety of foods from different food groups. These foods include infant cereals, meat or other proteins, fruits, vegetables, grains, yogurts and cheeses, and more.

If your child is eating infant cereals, it is important to offer a variety of fortifiedalert icon infant cereals such as oat, barley, and multi-grain instead of only rice cereal. Only providing infant rice cereal is not recommended by the Food and Drug Administration because there is a risk for children to be exposed to arsenic. Visit the U.S. Food & Drug Administrationexternal icon to learn more.

How Should I Introduce My Child to Foods?

Your child needs certain vitamins and minerals to grow healthy and strong.

Now that your child is starting to eat food, be sure to choose foods that give your child all the vitamins and minerals they need.

Click here to learn more about some of these vitamins & minerals.

Let your child try one single-ingredient food at a time at first. This helps you see if your child has any problems with that food, such as food allergies. Wait 3 to 5 days between each new food. Before you know it, your child will be on his or her way to eating and enjoying lots of new foods.

Introduce potentially allergenic foods when other foods are introduced.

Potentially allergenic foods include cow’s milk products, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, and sesame. Drinking cow’s milk or fortified soy beverages is not recommended until your child is older than 12 months, but other cow’s milk products, such as yogurt, can be introduced before 12 months. If your child has severe eczema and/or egg allergy, talk with your child’s doctor or nurse about when and how to safely introduce foods with peanuts.

How Should I Prepare Food for My Child to Eat?

At first, it’s easier for your child to eat foods that are mashed, pureed, or strained and very smooth in texture. It can take time for your child to adjust to new food textures. Your child might cough, gag, or spit up. As your baby’s oral skills develop, thicker and lumpier foods can be introduced.

Some foods are potential choking hazards, so it is important to feed your child foods that are the right texture for his or her development. To help prevent choking, prepare foods that can be easily dissolved with saliva and do not require chewing. Feed small portions and encourage your baby to eat slowly. Always watch your child while he or she is eating.

Here are some tips for preparing foods:

Mix cereals and mashed cooked grains with breast milk, formula, or water to make it smooth and easy for your baby to swallow.
Mash or puree vegetables, fruits and other foods until they are smooth.
Hard fruits and vegetables, like apples and carrots, usually need to be cooked so they can be easily mashed or pureed.
Cook food until it is soft enough to easily mash with a fork.
Remove all fat, skin, and bones from poultry, meat, and fish, before cooking.
Remove seeds and hard pits from fruit, and then cut the fruit into small pieces.
Cut soft food into small pieces or thin slices.
Cut cylindrical foods like hot dogs, sausage and string cheese into short thin strips instead of round pieces that could get stuck in the airway.
Cut small spherical foods like grapes, cherries, berries and tomatoes into small pieces.
Cook and finely grind or mash whole-grain kernels of wheat, barley, rice, and other grains.

Learn more about potential choking hazards and how to prevent your child from choking.

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Feeding Your 8- to 12-Month-Old (for Parents)

en español: Alimentar a su hijo de 8 a 12 meses de edad

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD

By 8 months old, most babies are pros at handling the iron-fortified infant cereals and the puréed foods that are part of their diet, along with breast milk or formula.

Over the next few months, they will start to explore table foods.

Changing Eating Habits

Offer your baby a variety of tastes and textures from all food groups. Start any new food with a trial run (a few days to a week) to look for any allergic reactions. Babies younger than 12 months old should not have:

honey until after a baby's first birthday. It can cause botulism in babies.
unpasteurized juice, milk, yogurt, or cheese
regular cow's milk or soy drinks before 12 months instead of breast milk or formula. It’s OK to offer pasteurized yogurt and cheese.
foods that may cause choking, such as hot dogs, raw vegetables, grapes, hard cheese, popcorn, and nuts
foods with added sugars and no-calorie sweeteners
high-sodium foods

Babies this age are likely showing more interest in table foods. You can fork-mash, cut up, blend, or grind whatever foods the rest of the family eats. To prevent choking, cook table foods a little longer, until very soft, and cut or shred them into small pieces that your baby can handle safely.

Around 9 months old, infant usually can pick food up between their finger and thumb so they can try feeding themselves.

If you haven't already, have your baby join the rest of the family at meals. They enjoy being at the table.

After the first birthday, babies are ready to switch to cow's milk. If you're breastfeeding, you can continue beyond 1 year, if desired. If you decide to stop breastfeeding before your baby's first birthday, give iron-fortified formula. If your baby is over 12 months, give whole milk.

Let your baby keep working on drinking from a cup, but do not give juice to infants younger than 12 months. After 12 months, you can serve whole milk in a cup, which will help with the move from the bottle.

Feeding Safety

Always supervise when your child is eating. Make sure your child sits up in a high chair or other safe place. Don't serve foods that your baby could choke on.

If you're unsure about whether a finger food is safe, ask yourself:

Does it melt in the mouth? Some dry cereals will melt in the mouth, and so will light and flaky crackers.
Is it cooked enough so that it mashes easily? Well-cooked vegetables and fruits will mash easily. So will canned fruits and vegetables. (Choose canned foods that don't have added sugar or salt.)
Is it naturally soft? Cottage cheese, shredded cheese, and small pieces of tofu are soft.
Can it be gummed? Pieces of ripe banana and well-cooked pasta can be gummed.

Making Meals Work

Keep your baby's personality in mind when feeding your baby. A child who likes a lot of stimulation may enjoy it when you "play airplane" with the spoon to get the food into their mouth. But a more sensitive tot might need the focus kept on eating with few distractions.

If your baby rejects new tastes and textures, serve new foods in small portions and don’t give up. It can take 8-10 tries before a baby accepts a new food.

How Much Should My Baby Eat?

Infant formula and breast milk continue to provide important nutrients for growing infants. But babies will start to drink less as they learn to eat variety of solid foods.

Watch for signs that your child is hungry or full. Respond to these cues and let your child stop when full. A child who is full may suck with less enthusiasm, stop, or turn away from the breast or the bottle. With solid foods, they may turn away, refuse to open their mouth, or spit the food out.

Let your baby finger feed or hold a spoon while you do the actual feeding. This is good preparation for the toddler years, when kids take charge of feeding themselves. And if you haven't already, set regular meal and snack times.

Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MD

Date reviewed: November 2021

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How to teach a child to eat with a spoon and at what age is it better to start

Usually, parents feed their children from a spoon not out of emotion, but for practical reasons: it’s faster and cleaner. Pediatrician Olga Kulakova explains at what age a child can handle eating with a spoon and fork and whether this process can be somehow accelerated.

Question. My daughter is already 1.5 years old, and she just can't eat with a spoon on her own. By what age should a child learn to use cutlery? And are there ways to teach him?

Answer. The first acquaintance of a child with a spoon begins in the first year of life and coincides in time with the beginning of the introduction of complementary foods. At 6–7 months, the baby may begin to show interest in the spoon as an object. This is an excuse to buy another baby spoon and put it next to the plate. Let the child turn it in his hands, examine it and try to use it for its intended purpose.

At around 9 months of age, your baby can start picking up a spoon on their own. But this does not mean that he will be able to scoop up food and bring it to his mouth. Rather, it is about the fact that the child is trying to copy the movements of adults.

A child usually masters a full-fledged spoon by about one and a half years. But here it is important to remember that everything is very individual. Someone already a year old is excellent at using a spoon, and someone is still fed by their parents even at two years old. And it’s not worth worrying that the child is over a year old, and he is still just learning and he doesn’t succeed.

Under no circumstances should children be forced to master this science. Aggressive training can cause a backlash: the child will no longer want to pick up cutlery.

How to teach a child to use a spoon:

Have him sit at a common table, let him watch how family members eat.
Do not force feed your baby. Let him eat with his hands. He will not be able to eat porridge and soup like that - he will have to try to master the spoon.
Play role-playing games with him more often, in which the child feeds his toys from a spoon.

At this age, the child actively copies the behavior of his loved ones, and it is important that he sees how the whole family eats with cutlery.

Children learn to use a fork around the age of three: at this age they already understand that a fork is a sharp object and can be hurt.

Pay attention to how the child grasps cutlery:

At 1-2 years old, he holds a spoon in his fist in the middle of the handle.
By two years - closer to the wide back.
From the age of three, he can begin to hold the spoon with three fingers: thumb, index and middle.

Sooner or later the child will pick up the spoon and fork on his own as it should be

Children are given large time intervals to acquire certain developmental skills. For example, some children can learn to walk at 9 months, and others by one and a half years, and both will be the norm. The same story with cutlery: one child may become interested in them at 7–8 months, another at 9 months or after a year. All of these are variations of the norm.

However, by the age of two, a child should normally pick up a spoon and try to eat on his own. This does not mean that he will eat all the soup in the bowl, but at least a few spoons he should be able to bring to his mouth.

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Prepared by the trainee Anastasia Shirokova. Cover photo: Shutterstock / FotoDuets

step-by-step instructions with videos and expert advice

According to the principles of modern pediatrics, all stages of a child's development correspond to certain age stages (1). Upon reaching a certain age, the baby begins to roll over, sit down, walk. At about 6-8 months (if not earlier), the first teeth erupt, at the same time parents begin to introduce complementary foods (1).

Closer to the year the child begins to take an active interest in the very process of eating and even tries to take away the spoon from the adult in order to try to use it on his own. At this point, it is important to support the baby's initiative, and not try to feed him yourself, because "it's easier and faster, and the kitchen will remain clean."

At what age should a child be able to eat with a spoon

There is no clear age limit. In general, it is believed that a child should learn to eat with a spoon by about 1.5-2 years (1). But some children at 1.5 years old recognize only liquid food and choke on even a tiny piece.

What are the signs that your baby is ready to learn to eat on his own? First you need to figure out when he can generally be given solid food. The first chewing movements in an infant appear at about 4-5 months. At this time, you can gradually begin to introduce the first complementary foods - cereals and vegetable purees (2). By 7-8 months, the baby can already eat vegetable and meat purees, grated fruits with small pieces (2). Closer to the year, the child's chewing skills improve - he can already bite off solid food, move it in his mouth, and chew relatively large pieces of food (3). And just at this time, you can hand the baby a spoon so that he learns to use it.

As noted by pediatrician Elena Gvozdetskaya , familiarity with a spoon usually begins with the introduction of complementary foods. At the age of 4-6 months, the baby can feel and touch the cutlery, taste it. At the age of 9-10 months, the child already imitates the movements of adults: he lowers the spoon into the food, tries to scoop up food with it, and brings it to his mouth. Often at the age of 1.5-2 years, the child can already eat with a spoon on his own, but this is not always the case.

“Sometimes it takes much longer to acquire this skill, and this is absolutely normal for the child and his individual development,” emphasizes our expert.

Which spoon to choose for training your baby

To make the process easier, it is important to get the right cutlery for your baby. When choosing a spoon, you need to pay attention to the material from which it is made, as well as its shape and size.

- It is better to choose silicone, rubber or food-grade plastic as a material for children's devices. In my opinion, silicone is the safest, most pleasant to the touch and easy to use, - notes pediatrician Elena Gvozdetskaya. - Rubber is softer and can deform over time, it also easily absorbs odors. Plastic is quite hard, during use it can crack, split and injure the child. It is better to choose a small spoon, with a slightly curved wide and non-slip handle, and a deep scoop. It should be light, comfortable to hold in a child's hand and to scoop up food.

However, sooner or later the baby will have to be accustomed to metal spoons. According to pediatrician, neurologist, Ph.D. Irina Meteleva , it is better to do this when the child already has teeth.

- In this case, while eating, the baby, if he bites on a spoon, will not hurt his gums, but will “click” on it with his teeth. It is recommended to choose a spoon with a thickness of 2 to 5 mm, the doctor advises.

What foods can baby eat with a spoon

Photo: Providence Doucet, unsplash.com

In principle, there are no strict restrictions here: a child can eat all his first meal with a spoon - soup, porridge, mashed potatoes and even some fruits, boiled vegetables. The main thing is that all the dishes offered should be of a fairly soft consistency so that they can be scooped up and sent to the mouth.

1. Solid food

If the child has already passed from liquid food to pieces, you can cut boiled vegetables or soft fruits and have the child eat them with a spoon. It can be, for example, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, broccoli, banana, peach, mango, avocado. You can also try soft, well-boiled cereals: buckwheat, rice, bulgur.

2. Puree

This is the perfect food that your baby can eat on their own with a spoon. Moreover, vegetable, fruit and meat purees are the first complementary foods, so the process of accustoming to a spoon can begin with them.

— So that the product does not spill out of the spoon on the way to the mouth, you can use a thicker puree, and choose a spoon with a deep scoop, — Elena Gvozdetskaya advises.

3. Soups

This is a liquid food, so at first it will be quite difficult for the baby to get a spoonful of soup to his mouth without spilling it and not soiling everything around. Do not scold the child if the food is on the table or clothes.

You can also offer puree soup, or pre-crush the solid ingredients of the dish in a bowl, so that it is more convenient for the baby to scoop them up with a spoon.

Soup and other liquid foods a child can eat with a spoon by himself at the age of 1.4-2 years.

4. Other products

A baby aged 1-1.3 years armed with a spoon can be offered cereals, curds and yoghurts.

“Usually we say that a child at 1.5 years old can sit down at a common table, provided that his parents prefer normal food, and not pizza or convenience foods,” explains pediatrician Irina Meteleva. - If there are too large pieces in the dish, they can be crushed with a fork. By the way, you also need to teach your child to eat in pieces on time. For example, if an infant at the age of 8-10 months is not introduced into the diet of pieces of soft food (potato, banana), then in the future he will carefully select all the pieces that come across to him and put them on a plate.

5 ways to teach your child to eat with a spoon

What are the methods and secrets that will help to teach your baby to be more independent at the table? Let's talk a little more about the rules that will facilitate this process.

Prepare a seat

Set aside a separate seat before teaching your child to eat independently. If you don’t want the whole room and the table to be flooded with food, lay an oilcloth on the floor, and tie a bib or even something like an apron on the child so as not to stain clothes.

Prepare your baby's own utensils - a comfortable and beautiful plate made of unbreakable material, a silicone, rubber or plastic spoon. Put a very small portion on a plate, and when the child copes with it, you can offer an additive.

Get your baby interested in food

If your child doesn't want to eat, it will be useless to teach him how to handle a spoon on his own. Turn off the TV, put away all toys and gadgets. Let the child focus only on the process of eating. If the baby is naughty, he is not hungry or does not feel well, postpone training and do not force him.

Set an example

It is better if the child eats with other family members, but at his own separate table for feeding. Seeing how cleverly mom and dad, brothers and sisters use a spoon, the baby will definitely want to repeat the movements after them and will try to eat on their own. Be sure to praise the baby, even if he does not succeed the first time.

Do not rush the child

Many parents make the mistake of thinking that it is enough to put a spoon in the child's hand and he will instantly learn how to use it. Do not rush or yell at the child if he studies the cutlery for a long time, licks it or picks at the plate. If your baby is unable to scoop up food, do not snatch the spoon from him or try to feed him yourself. Give your child time and freedom of action.

But leaving the baby alone at the table is also not worth it: the child may choke or be frightened if he accidentally turns over the plate, and simply gets bored alone.

Turn learning into a game

The process of getting used to a spoon is not fast, so it is important to constantly train and not only at the table. For example, playing in the sandbox with a spatula will help your child learn to hold cutlery faster. You can also consolidate the results by “feeding” dolls and bears from a spoon with your child. Family members can also be involved.

Life hacks and expert advice

Pediatrician Elena Gvozdetskaya recommends first of all to be patient when teaching your baby how to use a spoon on his own. You can not scold the child, scream if the food is spilled, so as not to cause negative associations. You also need to remove all distractions: the phone, cartoons, toys from the table, so that the child is focused only on food.

If once a child chokes, chokes, burns, he may refuse to eat himself for some time. Then a break is needed, after which you can again offer the baby to take a spoon.

- Be an example: sit down at the table and show how to eat. Offer your child different foods according to taste, color, shape, size. If the baby refuses to eat, perhaps he is simply not hungry. Postpone the meal for a while, and then everything will definitely work out, the expert notes.

Pediatrician, Ph.D. Irina Meteleva notes that it is important to teach a child to eat independently at a certain age, when the baby perceives it as a game, not coercion:

- The most correct option when the baby turns 7-9months, and we feed him already in a high chair, give one spoon to the child, and take the second spoon for ourselves. In this way, we combine the process of feeding with the child's own experience. Of course, he will dirty himself and everything around him, but this will not be a game, but a learning process. If the parents are perfectionists, prefer perfect cleanliness in the kitchen and tolerate food smeared everywhere, the child, of course, will learn to eat on his own, but much later - closer to 3 years.

A child who has brothers or sisters 1-3 years older than him learns to use a spoon faster. The kid will be happy to repeat everything after them.