Starting Solids

Whether you are breast or bottle-feeding, the next phase can be an enjoyable introduction to family foods, or it can set the stage for problems down the road. It takes children many no-pressure exposures to learn to like new foods. They learn by watching you eat, smelling, squishing, licking and spitting out. Don’t give up! Start around six months, maybe a little earlier or later—when your child is ready. Your child’s nutrition still mostly comes from breast milk or formula for the first few months of solids. Gradually as she becomes more competent and interested in feeding herself, her food intake will increase and her liquid intake will slowly decrease. Over the next several months, you will transition from on-demand feeding, to him joining in with meals, and eating with more structure. How you feed is as important as what foods you offer. Ask your doctor about any allergy concerns, or if there seem to be developmental delays.

• Be sure she is sitting upright and can open her mouth for the spoon, and close her lips around the spoon.

• Be calm and pleasant company at meals. • Have your child join in with family meals, eat with your child. • Aim to offer foods about every 2-3 hours by the time she is roughly 12-16 months old. • Follow the Division of Responsibility in feeding:

Parent decides what, and where (breast milk or formula, baby foods or table foods prepared for baby). Infant decides how much, if (and when initially) to eat from what you provide

• Be aware of choking risks, have child upright, watch her closely, get CPR certified. • Let him explore his food and make a MESS. • Some babies really want to “do it myself!” and will reject the spoon. Help him with

appropriate foods, load the spoon and let him put it in his mouth, or skip the spoon. • Don’t trick, force or play games to get your child to eat more. • Allow your child to feed herself when she is ready. It takes more time and is messier. • Let him eat as fast or slow as he wants to. • Let her play with and explore food and appropriate utensils. • Serve different tastes and textures often, don’t assume she doesn’t like it if she spits it

out or makes a face. • Serve the foods you want her to learn to like to eat. Prepare them in ways she can

handle (use a food mill to grind, or fork mash well-cooked veggies…) • Sometimes she will only want a bite or two, and that is okay. Sometimes she will want

more. Feed until she signals she is done.

Remember: trying to push a child to eat more or less will not make him/her grow faster or slower. Pressure with feeding almost always backfires.

For ore information visit www.thefeedingdoctor.com • 1-888-848-6802 Katja Rowell MD, The Feeding Doctor LLC 2013