Don’t play with food! Or yet?

Cucumber slices not only revive my tired eyes, but our girl is into beauty masks too:
She finds fruits and vegetables exciting on her skin! During her experiments with edibles, her entire environment is occasionally affected as well. At such moments, one educational formula in particular pops into my head: "Don't play with food!". But why not actually?

Children discover their world with all their senses – so does food. So how would a few months young baby know that cucumber is food and not a toy? Kids need to smell food, taste food, touch food – they need to BEGGET that food is different from objects. Not only in terms of taste! Everything feels different: A cooked potato e.g. can be mashed effortlessly with the fingers, while a honeydew melon requires greater effort. Only with time does it become clear what is edible and that building blocks, for example, do not become palatable even after being nibbled and slobbered on in great detail.

Food: Pleasure or frustration?

There are babies who enjoy passive feeding and like to eat large amounts of porridge at regular intervals. However, I have noticed that many offspring are urged (in my opinion much too early) to switch from breast milk or bottle feeding to porridge. It is not uncommon for a power struggle to ensue, resulting in disgusted faces and heads turning away from the baby. Reflected in desperate and worried mother's mien. An unnecessary scenario that is often no longer just about nutrition. Food should unite, not divide minds!

Crash program for complementary feeding

We expect our babies to give up their usual milk within a few weeks, to adapt to new tastes AND to get used to solid food. We expect a complete change. Herbert Renz-Polster aptly calls this madness – simultaneous feeding and weaning in record time – a "crash program". [1] It is seldom checked whether the little ones are really ready for it. The individual pace and abilities are hardly taken into account. But if we shift our attention for just a moment from the generally accepted notions to our children, one thing becomes clear: 700.000 babies born every year cannot possibly be processed according to a pattern! If parents are nevertheless focused only on discipline and cleanliness, it is no wonder that some babies lose their appetite..

Play becomes food

Instead of forcing children to eat or tricking them into eating by playing fliers or the like nor "spoon feeding grandma," children's natural curiosity can be harnessed by casually offering them a variety of foods. Babies naturally take everything enthusiastically in their hands and after a very short time in their mouths. In this way, they can learn that the "toys" on offer sometimes taste quite delicious: they learn to eat through play. In this way, food intake is linked with positive feelings, an important basis for shared meals, and, quite incidentally, fine motor skills and hand-mouth coordination are trained, an important prerequisite for speech and language development.

If you can't take a joke, you have a serious problem [2]

If we refuse to allow our children to pick up food, we may stop their exploratory urge and thus take away their joy in eating. If, in addition, coercion or pressure is exerted, in that children e.g. If children are forced to eat a certain amount of food, in the worst case they may refuse to eat. [3] Allowing children to play with their food or, in other words, actively involving them in what's going on (baby lead weaning) also has an advantage from a medical point of view: they tend to be less overweight than babies who have to obediently finish their bottles and are "spooned" porridge beyond their feeling of fullness. If you still insist on letting your children just watch, you have to expect that even later, when they are supposed to, they will show no interest in eating on their own because it is so comfortable to be fed. [4]

Most children accept a mixed approach – they allow themselves to be fed if, for example, they are allowed to hold a spoon in their own hands and "help scoop". Often I have our girl also a piece of vegetables, e.g. I offered her a tomato while I helped her to spoon pasta with tomato sauce. Children don't always refuse to be fed, but they want to imitate us in every situation – and when it comes to eating, they can only do this with cutlery in their hands!

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