Baby-led feeding (BLW) is a widely adopted strategy for introducing complementary foods to infants that emphasizes self-feeding with whole, unmodified family meals. Unfortunately, no controlled trials have investigated this form of feeding yet.
No matter if you choose the traditional/puree route or opt for BLW, it is key that you follow your child’s lead in making their diet choice.
Let Them Pick Their Foods
Baby-led weaning (BLW) Facebook pages feature photos of infants gorging themselves on all sorts of surprising foods like casseroles and chicken drumsticks, while exploring hand-held foods themselves as soon as they’re ready – typically around six months of age. The goal is for babies to explore and feed themselves hand-held food themselves and discover which they like the best, hopefully prompting a journey toward independent feeding of themselves later on in life.
This method offers multiple advantages for babies and parents alike. It introduces babies to more textures than they would receive through pureed or pre-packaged baby food, enabling them to choose how much food to eat each meal, while simultaneously developing their fine motor skills and learning to chew food properly.
Engaging children in food preparation can also be extremely helpful as it increases their interest in sampling what they helped create. Furthermore, participating in this way helps develop their patience – something key for maintaining a healthy diet; according to studies, children who can wait patiently for foods they truly desire are likely to feel more satisfied overall with their meals and snacks overall.
Let Them Talk About Their Foods
As a parent, you may have heard of baby-led weaning (BLW), an approach to starting solid foods without purees that allows infants to self-feed themselves finger foods instead.[5]
BLW allows babies to explore food at their own pace and discover its taste, texture, scent and appearance as well as develop strong chewing skills – something spoon-feeding cannot. In turn this helps develop healthier eating habits.
Parents or caregivers in BLW settings offer food to infants and monitor for signs such as an open mouth, interest in eating the food or diminishing tongue thrust reflex. When these signs are detected, food can be given freely; infants will then decide when and how much to consume.
Before adopting the baby-led weaning (BLW) approach, it’s wise to consult your pediatrician or speech pathologist as this method might not suit every infant. They may advise starting your child on non-milk foods more traditionally for health or safety purposes.
Let Them Eat With Themselves
Parents often opt for Baby-Led Weaning (BLW), an approach that skips purees altogether in favor of starting babies off on food they can grab themselves and feed themselves. This allows for independence while simultaneously developing hand-eye coordination.
Infants can explore food, get messy and eat what they desire at their own pace – all the while building more responsive eating habits by not overriding internal hunger and satiety regulatory cues.
This approach can be combined with other sound nutrition practices, including serving a wide variety of healthy foods and not overemphasizing any particular ones. It’s essential that children get all of the vital vitamins and minerals, particularly iron. Furthermore, too much sweets or processed food that may contain saturated fat, sodium or calories should be limited as much as possible.
Let Them Pick Their Plate
Images you see of infants eating chicken drumsticks and casseroles is due to parents who practice baby-led weaning (BLW). The philosophy behind this type of feeding is that at six months, babies have developed enough to consume solid foods without needing purees as part of a weaning program.
Parents should remember that breast milk or formula should remain their child’s primary source of nutrition until about 12 months old, although it is important to offer various foods in order to ensure all necessary vitamins and minerals for growth and development are obtained.
No matter your choice of feeding method – traditional spoon-feeding or baby led weaning (BLW), responsive feeding encourages children to eat when hungry and less when full, thus decreasing obesity risk in later years and teaching children self-sufficiency as eaters – an invaluable life skill!https://www.youtube.com/embed/grEoE08u8_Q