What is Baby Led Weaning and how to assist your child in this process

Young kids can be compared with dough because they are raw and can be molded into any shape. Now it depends on you what kind of habits you develop in your little ones to make them grow into great human beings. The teaching must include how they behave, how they talk, or even how they eat.

Eating is something that all of us do every day. But the eating habits you feed your toddler remains with them for the longest time. So it would be best if you started on a good note. For that purpose, you can opt for the latest procedure that many new parents are already trying on, called the ‘Child Led Weaning.’

In this method, the children are taught to eat solid foods on their own. Here we will discuss everything about this procedure that you would want to know. Let’s start with the benefits.

Benefits

Many parents have already undertaken this method to teach their babies healthy eating habits. The primary motive of self-feeding is to let kids have fun eating on their own. Giving them the authority of their food helps parents achieve the following benefits:

• There is no overeating as they decide how much to eat by themselves.
• They develop better eating habits due to exposure to a variety of food items.
• You will get rid of the hassle of taking care of their hunger, as they will be handling it on their own.
• They learn to chew as you avoid purees and liquids.
• It improves their coordination of hand and eye.

Along with these baby led weaning benefits, you might encounter some issues while making them eat independently. To make the experience better, a lot of parents start with appropriate foods and a high chair. The chair helps keep the new learner stable so that they do not create a mess everywhere.

Best Led weaning foods

Giving them solids does not mean you can give them any solid food. As this is the experimenting phase, you need to keep your baby led weaning foods’ list very particular. Here are a few tips that will help you select foods for this time.

Tip 1: Keep it single ingredient

You might want to give your young one everything you cook, but that will only increase your problems. To examine their food habits and any allergies that they possess, you need to keep the food to a single ingredient. They will find it easy to chew and digest while you can look for food allergies.

Tip 2: Keep the size appropriate

Another crucial part of the process is the size of the food. If you give the kid a full-size food, they will not be able to balance it, let alone eating. The food should be kept long and thin so that they can comfortably grip on them and lead it to their mouth. It can also be kept coin size because that is easy to handle as well.

Tip 3: Take care of the texture

Avoid giving foods that are tough to chew and swallow. The textures of the items you select should be soft and mashable with gentle pressure. If you are picking fruits that are tough in touch, you can boil them to make them smooth and then give it to your novice eater.

Tip 4: Move on with complex foods

Once you have experimented with enough foods and found the tolerable items, you can move on to complex foods. It will include multi-ingredient dishes that are high in calories and are filled with nutrients and fats. Remember to keep the salt intake from minimum to zero because the young stomachs do not function well with sodium.

This was all about BLW foods. It is crucial to remain careful about what you provide to the naive mouths because they are not familiar with most of the textures and tastes.

How to succeed

It might be a tough job taking care of your little ones’ food habits, but it is vital as well. To reduce your efforts, here are some points that you can follow to succeed in the procedure.

Eat Together

Experts recommend that you should keep your infant’s mealtime the same as yours, i.e., include them in the family meals. It will give them more comfort, and they will be able to proceed better.

Remain Calm During The Mess

As the new ones are naive to the concept of balancing hands and eating, they tend to make a lot of mess. There is nothing wrong with that, and you should let them eat however they want. Once they start balancing their foods well, you will no longer be worried about anything. Till then, keep calm and let them enjoy.

Do Not Force

If a blog says finger foods, then you do not have to stuff your BLW feeding process with those. Every kid has their own speed, likes, and bodies. So they should be treated as a unique one. It would help if you let them eat what they are more comfortable with, though you can try different items in between to check if they are ready to try it or not.

Ensure Nutrients

The secret for a baby’s growth is the food that they eat. You must take care of nutrients at the time of child led weaning phase. The reason being, it is the time of growth for them, and only a proper nutritious diet can ensure that growth. So balance their meals according to what their bodies require the most.

Conclusion

BLW might not be an easy procedure, but it is essential for ensuring your little one’s adequate growth. With these tips and tricks, you can make the most out of this method. However, you still need to take care of a few factors, like allergies and gagging. These are the two most common phenomena that happen during child led weaning. If you encounter any issues with both of them, then you should consult your pediatrician for guidance.