Utensil use?

[Anonymous]

At what age did you child/ children start self-feeding with a spoon? Is it one of the fine-motor skill points that normally takes place at a certain time?

[Anonymous]

Our son started attempting it around 14 months. It's a mess, of course, but he does get some in his mouth. At his 15-month visit, our doc said that was really good: neurologically they really couldn't scoop up the food at that point. We definitely help him out with that part--like yesterday I speared the ravioli on his fork and then handed it to him to put in his mouth.

[Anonymous]

My 15 month old can use a fork very well, but has no success with a spoon.

[Anonymous]

My 14 month old just discovered last week that the extra spoon I always put on his tray is for something other than banging and throwing. So I've been letting him dip his spoon in applesauce, yogurt, etc and he has been doing a pretty good job at getting it in his mouth. But, like I said, this has been an overnight development within the last week. He'll use a fork now as well, but I have to do the food-stabbing for him.

[Anonymous]

My 11 month old is very into trying to use her spoon. I help her scoop using a hand over hand technique and then she takes the food to her mouth or I scoop it and hand it to her. Sometimes she can even scoop herself, but usually she gets frustrated and hands the spoon over to me for help.

[Anonymous]

Our 18 mth DD has been using her spoon and fork sincea bout 13 months. She has only recently begun to actually understand how it works. For instance, she now tries to place thigns on her spoon before getting it to her mouth, instead of just smacking it around and maybe getting food on it. Same with the fork. She doesn't get the spearing thing yet, but she'll pick up the food and put it on the fork tine. One of these days.....