Teaching your little one how to eat on their own, also known as “baby-led weaning”, can be tricky. Since your baby is still learning to move and hold things, you’ll be dealing with a lot of spills and messes during this process, and it can be extra tiring cleaning up over and over again.
Fortunately, different baby bowls and spoons exist to ensure your baby can minimize mess and learn to eat safely. Here’s why you should get baby bowls and spoons for baby-led weaning.
What Is Baby Led Weaning?
To wean a child is teaching them how to eat solid foods, which you should do when your baby is at the age of four to six months. The traditional way of weaning is spoon-feeding, where you simply serve food on a spoon to your baby.
Baby-led weaning, on the other hand, is introducing your baby to solid foods and teaching them how to feed themselves. Although more difficult than spoon-feeding, teaching your child to feed themselves has many benefits.
Here are some.
Your Baby Controls What They Eat
Children can be picky eaters, and it’s hard for parents to know whether or not they like their food or if they’ve had enough because they can’t explicitly say so. If your child knows how to feed themselves, they can eat at their own pace, lessening the stress that comes with spoon-feeding.
You Prepare Less Food
Once you start introducing your baby to solid foods, you won’t need baby food or purees as much. Instead, you can feed them the same meals as the rest of the family, saving you time and energy that could otherwise be spent on caring for your baby.
Your Baby Experiences Eating in Full
Part of the reason you must wean your baby is so they can experience different tastes and textures, which can help in their development. Baby-led weaning allows them to experience eating in full—holding food, utensils, and feeding themselves±giving them more information to process as they learn how to eat.
Your Baby Practices Motor Skills and Hand-Eye Coordination
One of the toughest parts about baby-led weaning for your child is learning how to hold dinnerware properly. But this is no cause for concern. Other than the occasional spilled food, you’re looking at hours of practice for your baby’s motor skills and hand-eye coordination, helping them develop more skills earlier.
Things To Watch Out for During Baby-Led Weaning
While baby-led weaning is beneficial for your child’s development, there are still some things to look out for during the process. Here are a few of them.
Keep Food In Moderation
Watch out for when your child is eating too much. They don’t know their limit yet, so it’s best that they eat under your supervision. Always remember, “Food is for fun until year one.” Don’t let them eat too much, otherwise, they may gag or choke on the food or come into contact with dangerous allergic substances.
Maintain a Healthy Diet
Although food is for fun until they become a year old, it’s important you lessen salt, sugar, and fat in their food. This could mean a total lifestyle change for your family, at least in the meantime. Food that is high in salt, fat, and sugar could be detrimental to your toddler’s health.
Why Should You Get Baby Spoons and Bowls?
As you’ve read above, a lot about baby weaning is really about patience and anticipating messy situations. So regular dinnerware won’t cut it for your baby during mealtimes. If you want to lessen your cleanup time and keep your baby safe, you should look at specially designed baby bowls and spoons.
Here are some benefits of using them.
Benefits of Baby Bowls and Spoons
Baby bowls and baby spoons are designed to serve four main functions:
- For your baby’s safety
- To reduce messes
- For easier mealtimes
- For hassle-free cleaning
To make baby bowls and spoons safer, they’re usually made using plastic or silicone, which are much safer alternatives than regular porcelain or steel dinnerware. Porcelain or stainless steel bowls have a high chance of cutting your baby, so it’s best to avoid using them until much later. Plastic and silicone products are also less slippery and easier for your child to hold.
Though baby-safe plastic exists, we still highly recommend food-grade silicone as products made with this material are considered safe for your baby’s mouth and overall well being.
To make things even safer, baby spoons are designed with soft tips to gently feed your baby, since hard plastic tips could easily bruise your child’s gums. The spoon itself is also designed to serve only small portions to prevent your child from choking or overeating, with a grip that makes it easy for your child to avoid spills and messes.
To keep your place tidy, baby bowls are designed with special functions that prevent messes, too. A baby bowl usually comes with lids or suction cups that prevent it from spilling its contents. Simply stick the suction cup on your child’s high chair tray, or any other flat surface, so it has a fixed hold on the table your baby is eating at. For even more mess-free meals, these bowls come with lids that have an airtight lock mechanism that secures food safely.
To help you in meal preparation, most baby bowls are also designed to be microwave-safe, allowing you to save food by reheating your child’s meals when they want to eat their unfinished food.
Finally, to make them easier to clean, baby bowls and spoons are often dishwasher-safe. These are a godsend for busy parents who don’t have time to vigorously clean after their baby—just chuck them in the dishwasher and they’ll be good to go!
Try Out Ashtonbee’s Baby Feeding Products
Ashtonbee aims to provide your home with safe, high-quality baby products that can make life better for you and your little one. Start off your Ashtonbee experience with our baby bowls and baby spoons, both of which are made from high-quality food grade silicone, ensuring your baby eats safely.
Our products are BPA-, PVC-, lead-, and phthalate-free, so you don’t have to worry about any harmful chemicals ruining your baby’s mealtime.
Shop with us now through our website or Amazon store to get the best baby gear for your little one!
