[blparent] finger food suggestions for an almost toddler

[trishs]

Hi, Jo Elizabeth.  I've read some other posts, and all are good 
suggestions.   Hear's my take on this.
 I see a fiercely independent child, which is not a bad thing.  
You'll have to adjust your preparation habits, some, until she 
can learn to feed herself.  All I can add is that you serve what 
finger foods your family is used to, but keep the spoon available 
to Sarah.  Give her very small, maybe two bites worth of a 
"messy" food.  She'll figure out how to use it in her own time.
When it was me doing the feeding, I always held my babies on my 
lap.  Wet-whipes, and a towel on the side.
 I could never figure out how blind moms fed their children in a 
high-chair.  It was just easier for me to hold them.  Meal time 
was always stressful for me, I guess I wasn't really good at it.  
If a stranger happened along and said "What a beautiful baby!" 
I'd say "Thanks.  Wanna-feed-er."  Just kidding!  I can relate to 
your stress.  But, recently, a wise person said, "This too shall 
pass."

> ----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jo Elizabeth Pinto" <jopinto at pcdesk.net
>To: "NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List" <blparent at nfbnet.org
>Date sent: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:26:36 -0700
>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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