The kid's been testing out the spoon on her own for a few weeks now, and the results are generally positive. She obviously makes a mess; she sometimes freaks out if she has to (or can't, you never know, which sucks) spoon food all herself.
Anyway, we've found a great food for helping a kid learn to feed herself with a spoon: Whole Kids Organic Apple Sauce from Whole Foods.
It's thick and stays on the spoon really well, which is the key. Mott's is too watery, and besides, it has tons of high fructose corn syrup in it. [Whole Kids has just apples and vitamin c.]
Oddly enough, sour cream works well, too. It kind of surprised us tonight when the kid clamored for a spoonful of sour cream--which she'd never had--and then another, and another.
What doesn't work, unfortunately (i.e., I have to feed it to the kid myself): Stonyfield's Yo'baby whole milk yogurt for babies. If you stir it up, it, too is too runny to entrust to a lone child. Whatever she eats, she requires a lot of napkins.
Whole Kids organic apple sauce [wholefoodsmarket.com]
YoBaby organic yogurt for children [Stonyfield Farm]
So what does sour cream do to a baby's digestive system. If it is anything like pickle juice it could be scarry.
Motts has some sugar free varieties.
Never forget your good friend Rice Cereal. It can thicken most any runny food nicely (without interfering with flavors too much)...especially handy with YoBaby. As to spoons, I bought and tested many different spoons before finding one that would actually hold food for my daughter. For some reason most baby spoons are cleverly disguised canoe paddles - go figure. At any rate, we had to test lots of different spoons before we found some that actually held food.
The other thing that can work really well is giving your little gal something to dunk rather than a spoon. The favorite dunking tools at our house were whole wheat waffles cut into sticks (these freeze nicely so you can make up a big batch every other weekend or so). There were some less successful experiments with home-made teething crackers shaped like spoons; my conclusion was that soft things that sort of disintegrate work best. The waffles were always a hit with applesauce (the Mott's no-sugar-added line mixed with the berries is still one of my daughter's favorite snacks) or YoBaby, or almost anything else.
Here's a food that is thick, nutrituous and really popular with our kids: guacamole.
When's a good age to start with the spoon thing? We give our nine month old daughter a spoon with some food on it, she puts it in her mouth, we go YAAAAY! and GOOD JOB!! and then she puts the other end in her mouth, she drags the spoon all over her tray, she waves it around, then drops in on the floor.
I'm guessing she's not quite there, yet.
And, is there a really expensive spoon I can buy as a status symbol? (joke!)
Our son is 14 months, and he is now TRYING to get more food out of the bowl, but isn't really effective at it. He gets more on the back of the spoon than into it, and then he gets frustrated and throws the spoon.
It's a slow and messy process.
I was going to suggest mashed up avocados, but Chris beat me to the punch! My son loves all mexican food already! Yay!
I've found alot of foods with perfect consistency for my 13 month old son, here's a short list of his favorites:
Cottage Cheese
Elmer's glue
Dannon Yogurt
Sherwin Williams drywall compound
Crayola crayons (blue)
The arm of our couch
Helmans Mayonnaise
Mashed Carrots
Turtle brand car wax
Sherwin Williams drywall compound
yeah, who cares what sour cream does to their system if they're eating spackling.
Oh, and so far, it doesn't seem to do anything to the kids system. [14months, maybe a month into since transitioning to milk]
You could try Total yogurt - it's a thicker Greek yogurt that I imagine would stay on the spoon. It's really tasty, too!
-Mrs. FTF