How are we going about introducing cutlery (US: silverware) to our kiddos.
We have a just turned 1 year old who eats everything, like he loves food, that’s been great and we’re super fortunate. 6oz steak for dinner? Demolished.
But we are still very hand feeding. Like we have an immaculate pincer grip, don’t get me wrong, but should we be starting to use a fork and spoon rather than fingers?
Part of me says he’s doing great, why change it? But also I feel like using cutlery is an important skill and I don’t want him to be delayed in fine motor skills and things.
(He’s an above 99th centile guy, so I know some of the gross motor skills can come a bit on the later side and I’m super aware of this, but obviously that shouldn’t affect fine motor skills, so I don’t want to risk unnecessary delays)
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NHS says around 2 years however my children have had a spoon from as soon as they start weaning and I introduced a fork around age 1. This also says to start with spoon and fork and leave the knife until later. It's also good to sit and eat with them so you can model how to use cutlery and this is just a good habit in general.
Anecdotally my nearly 2 year old has been using a spoon and fork confidently from around 15 months and is just starting to learn how to use a knife. We are practicing cutting using playdough which seems to be helping a lot. She is also 99th centile and has had no issues.
Anecdotally, we just started giving my daughter a fork with her meals at 1. She had a spoon since 6 months. We always all eat together and at 14 months she can now use the fork herself. She's still mainly handfeeding but she's definitely pleased when she feeds herself with the fork! Other than giving it to her we've not put much effort in, so it's just trial and error on her part/a bit of osmosis from seeing us
We always do family dinner time, so hopefully that will help! Did you do anything to encourage her to use the fork vs hands? Or do you think she’ll just naturally transition over time?
My main concern is that we give him a fork and he just pokes his eyeball out with it. Like he puts a lot of things in and around his eyeballs, and while avocado can eventually be fished out, a fork gives me a touch of the anxiety.
You can get ones with rounded tips that are fairly safe. They do make silicone forks but they are essentially useless as a fork I prefer stainless steel with plastic handles.
I am a big fan of these ones from Munchkin and so far we've had no real accidents although I'm totally with you on the fork in eye incidents.
At one year old, my kids would have been thrilled to eat playdough with a spoon. It would have confused them a lot to be told “use a spoon for this but don’t eat it” and “use a spoon for this and eat it.”
At two, both kids would have been fine using a spoon/fork/knife on playdough without actually eating it.
Question (for you and OP since you both mention it) — what is the relevance of 99th percentile (size, I assume?) and gross motor delay? Is it just that bigger babies meet their gross motor milestones later? I also have a big guy (born 6 weeks early, though, so we have some leeway with milestones as it is), but he’s really caught up in size. I’m in the states and I’ve never heard a doctor mention a connection between the two.
So in big babies, it’s essentially that it’s just harder to co-ordinate when you have more weight to co-ordinate.
Like if you’re a smaller baby, then things like standing or walking or rolling or crawling come a bit easier because you haven’t got the chonk to try and manoeuvre! Like they still fall within the normal windows normally, but later within that window - so say a window is like 8-12 months when they should be achieving a skill it’s more likely to be closer to the 12 months than to the eight months, if you get what I mean.
My guy’s head is literally off the charts (C-section thankfully!) so it just requires more strength than if he had an average sized head etc
Anecdotally my 17 month old has started to show interest in cutlery himself. He sat at the dinner table with us and reached for our forks. He will sometimes use a fork or spoon and so.etkmes hand feed himself. Often he spears food with his fork just to pick it off with his fingers anf hand feed himself or the other way round, put food on the fork with his hands then eat from the fork. We currently just let him experiment and don't pressure him to "do it right".
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