[blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler

[Michael Baldwin]

Jo Elizabeth,
Sounds very familiar.  My daughter that is now 33 months, after she learned
she could feed herself, wanted nothing to do with being fed.  She was going
to do it herself, and that was all there was to it.  This started when she
was about 9-10 months old, and to this day she is a very independent little
girl.  But, we came up with different things she could feed herself, like
cheese, ham, different kinds of fruits, bananas, grapes, boiled vegetables
of about any kind, like corn, peas, karat, green beans.
I guess it comes down to what you want her to eat, what your comfortable
with her eating, and what kind of mess you want to have to clean up.  An old
rug under the high chair can help from getting some of the mess on the
carpet, or other flooring.

I am sure some will disagree with my suggestions, cause like cheese, I read
your not suppose to give until they are a year old or so, but it worked for
us, and my daughter is alive and happy and healthy.  Just make sure to cut
the food in to small bits for her, and like ham, we cut off the skin, cause
that was harder to chew.

Good luck,
Michael



Michael Baldwin
Got print, need Braille?
http://www.ReadWithDots.com

-----Original Message-----
From: blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:27 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: [blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler

Hi, all.  Sarah and I just got finished with the lunch from hell.  Or at
least that's the way I perceive it--she seems pretty satisfied with the
world now that it's over--she's babbling happily and playing with the pots
and pans in my kitchen cupboards like nothing happened, like her clothes and
mine, and our hair, and the high chair aren't covered with Gerber spaghetti
and meat sauce, like we weren't both near tears five minutes ago.  I feel
like I got hit by a train and dragged for a little while.  A slight
exaggeration maybe, but only a slight one.

Sarah and I have been having battles lately over the spoon, most of which I
lose.  It isn't that she doesn't want food, she's fortunately not a picky
eater.  She'll try anything.  The deal is, she wants to feed herself.  Fair
enough, that's the end goal, right?  But the spoon is too cumbersome for
her, so she resorts to her hands.  That's fine, as long as she's eating
diced banana or sweet potato or bits of meat or hard-boiled egg yolk, or
whole round peas, or Cheerios.  But those foods alone hardly make up a
balanced diet.  She needs other things that are too soft and runny to pick
up, like yogurt and such, and she absolutely won't allow me to feed her with
a spoon.  If I can manage to hold down her two wildly waving fists with one
hand, she flops her head madly from side to side so I can't get the dreaded
spoon anywhere near her mouth with the other, and she ends up with food
behind her ears, across her eyebrows, down her neck--you get the picture.
And you can imagine the screeching sound track that goes with it.  I'm
finding it hard to be calm and patient.  This time, after many tries, I gave
up on the spoon altogether because I don't want the high chair to become a
power struggle or a source of traumatic memories, and I sure don't want to
cross the line into force feeding.  I had that done to me as a child and
still suffer the effects.  I thickened the Gerber spaghetti and meat sauce
with cereal so it would hold together and just let her shovel it into her
mouth with both hands from the high chair tray, and then cleaned up the big
mess afterward.  Gerald can feed Sarah with a spoon, but she certainly isn't
willing, it's just that he can see the flailing hands and the dodging mouth
and sneak bites in on her.  But he isn't here most of the time, and I have a
responsibility to figure this out.

Anyway, besides the catharsis of writing this all out when I feel I have to
tell most people most of the time that things are utterly perfect, otherwise
I'm afraid they'll be doubting me as a parent and, in the case of my family,
wondering if they should intervene--I guess my question is how do I resolve
this stalemate?  I know I should give Sarah more finger foods, and I'll be
looking for every new idea I can get on that front.  But till she can feed
herself with a spoon, how can I help her and the mealtime skirmishes that
nobody really wins?  It's so odd because she has no wish to hold her own
bottle or learn to drink from a cup, but she wants to feed herself no matter
what.

Thanks,
Jo Elizabeth

"Don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds
water."--Swedish proverb _______________________________________________
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