Self Feeding

I realized a few days ago that I'm not doing Amelia any favors by continuing to spoon feed her entirely by myself. There have been times that she's wanted to try to feed herself and of course it's pretty messy, but she's got to learn sometime and if I don't do it soon, she may decide she doesn't need to even try. She's already gotten to the point where she is perfectly content to read books, draw with crayons and play with small toys while I feed her. This is not a good habit because she's already started to expect me to feed her while she plays as evidenced by her new lack of interest in using her fork with her fruit. Plus, if she feeds herself then I'll get to feed myself while we're all at the table. WHAT a concept.

So over the last few days I've given her one of her spoons (rather than the regular sized plastic spoons I've been using) and let her feed herself until she stopped. At that point, we reverted back to her playing while I fed her. It's going well and this morning she ate almost all of her cereal (Cheerios with milk) by herself!

All the books and magazines talk about how toddlers need so many different skills and fine motor muscle coordination to feed themselves. I can see this in action with Amelia because she will do really well for about 7 or 8 spoonfuls and then invariably she scoops, raises and then wham! full spoon goes against closed mouth - because she forgot to open it.! I have tried really, really hard not to laugh (and succeeded), as she continues with the next scoop, undeterred by the temporary setback.