I remember touring a daycare in my pregnancy and saw kids eating on their own and I distinctly remember telling my husband this: ‘I don’t know how they taught them to eat on their own, our kids will never be like that, they are too active’. Probably this statement rings a bell as you might have heard different versions of these:
‘Oh that will never work for my kid, he is super active’
‘How are these kids so well behaved? What magic do they do? Their kids must not be as active as ours’
‘You will never know the pain, until you have a super active kid’
Months rolled by and I hired a babysitter. While our weaning journey started kind of okay, once I hired a babysitter, it went downhill. She was a wonderful human but a terrible, terrible baby sitter. While feeding – most of the food would hit only the bib – seriously ONLY THE BIB – nothing will reach my kids mouth even if my kid just sat there and not moving, she would direct every spoon to the bib.
My kid, hungry and frustrated, would get frustrated even more and would be screaming the head off.
I remember once walking in to the room with a screaming baby and the bib full of food and not a morsel in my kids mouth. By now, the damage was done. My kid absolutely hated meal times. I tried everything over the weekend and nothing worked and my kid simply refused all further meals. Would scream at the sight of plate or spoon. It was that bad.
I posted an almost crying post in B group and they promptly closed it (
:)) and asked me to post in TW group. I joined it and cried until I got admitted and once admitted, I remember scanning through posts throughout the night wide-awake. What I saw was totally new to me, our kids self-feeding from as young as 6m old, some relishing a chicken and some relishing a mango. It really surprised me and opened my eyes wide.
I really woke up with a new resolve that day (yes, yes you can play Rajini’s success song in the background, and yes, that is a lie since I did not sleep that night to really wake up).
“To give control of food back to my kid. To not depend on babysitters or daycare providers for my kids food intake. “
Every day I would place exactly three pieces of food on my kids plate. My kid would promptly throw the food down and point hand to mouth like that baby mouse in Tom&Jerry. Since I ‘follow my child’, I continued to feed my baby after saying ‘food is for eating, ball is for throwing, if you don’t want it, give it to me’. However, I still kept three bites on my child plate every day before starting the meal. Every. Single. Meal.
This continued for 2 months, until one fine day my kid picked up food, did a quick inspection and put it in mouth instead of throwing it. And then picked up another bite and ate it. And continued to eat the entire meal by self feeding while I continued to place additional bits on plate.
Finally it worked. Months rolled by and I continued to face several regressions and every-time I would post in TW group and scan other groups and google online about food regressions. I remember early walking period was very tough for self-feeding and still managed to stick with it after several regressions. Now this is a very short crisp summery of our 2-year journey which was filled with ups and downs and my queries in TW group are testament to that. While you are there you can also see that lot of babies and their caregivers went through this journey or similar journeys.
One fine evening when my kid was having a snack my friend saw that and wanted to try self-feeding. I shared some pointers and after a week, she dropped in again and observed my kid feeding.
My kid sat down and started eating and she said ‘But your kid is sitting down to eat, that is why, self-feeding is working for your kid, mine never sits down to eat, so I stopped trying this, maybe this is not for active kids’
My non-calm self:: – what? What did you say? K sitting down at all time? wha…..😱🥺
My calm, composed and constructive self:: Shhh, this is public forum, calm down.
My NCS:: But but did you hear what she said? Let me at-least clarify.
My CCCS:: I understand, but this is public forum and you need to be calm and cordial, If you cannot, you need to leave…
NCS stomps the feet and storms away.
CCCS continues: Ahem, pardon the interruption, Now, let us look at that statement constructively:
These are some of the assumptions I went through before going through a completely different journey and hence listing these assumptions and how mindset change can help in any parent journey.
Assumption1: Self-feeding or respectful parenting methods are easy to implement
Inference1 : **No parenting method is easy to implement**.
Never choose a parenting method since it looks easy, choose it because it is right. Depending on your kid, sometimes it takes a day, a week, a month or even years to implement. Once you believe in a method, you have to stick to it and see it through. I remember reading a mom comment in Montessori group, “try it 1 time, try it 1000 times, try it million times, keep trying.”
Assumption 2: X assumed that active kids are not good learners
Inference2:
– (I am aware this may not be a popular though – but I am going to say anyway)
– Active kids means they have bundle of energy. They need to run around in playground/open space a lot or else they will keep bouncing off your walls. Active kids does not mean they are bad listeners. They are good listeners too – they might need more time – refer above point, but they are good listeners too. If still in doubt, header over to TW group to see lot of active kids self-feeding.
(NCS throwing vessels could be heard in the background. CCCS continues after closing door to muffle the noise)
Assumption 3: Witness 1 min of a kids journey (social media or real life) and assumed that was real-life and entire journey and hence was easy one. It surprises us when the actual journey was not easy.
Inference3:
– When you see a kid calm in a grocery cart, it is not because that kid is never active, it is probably because kid is already exhausted playing in park before coming to grocery or kid has already passed the early-walker stage or it could be due to numerous other reasons including setting-limits.
– There is a lot of work behind every parenting method. It is almost like Facebook, you only see smiling pictures of families having good time. You rarely see the non-perfect parts and real life part in public places. Even if you see, for example, a mom losing it and crying or shouting in public place, mostly people assume that the mom is weak without realizing the background.
— I temporarily forgot my kid is an active kid during self-feeding journey.
— In my desperation to give control of meal time to my kid, in my desperation to remove the food aversion and make my kid eat food again, I totally forgot my kid is an active kid and the statement I said in my first line above was completely out of my head. I was only focussed on making food / meal time a positive experience. I am doubtful if self-feeding would have worked for me, if I still remembered my own statement of self-feeding vs active kids.
Assumption 4 : Expecting our kid to follow same response to self-feeding
— Every kid is different, folks with multiple kids might have witnessed this – the method that works on one kid may not work on another. What I tried above may not work for you, maybe going cold turkey works for you. The time taken for a method also varies significantly with each kid. Every kid/every situation is a different puzzle that requires different solutions to try and hopefully solve.
What the self-feeding journey has taught me is that – never discount/reject a parenting method with the assumption that it will not work for the child. Give it a try, you might be surprised at the results.
****************
Edited to add:
1- Overcoming food aversion phase: The aversion was so severe – crying at the sight of food/plate/spoon/high-chair 🙁 – we had to stop meal times for baby for few days.
We continued to eat our meal around baby and after few days baby came and took food from plate and we started feeding again after that.
2- all of us are hardworking parents, there is no doubt about that.
However, choosing gentle parenting methods has long term benefits than other parenting methods like yelling or hitting which only gives short term results.
It is the difference between giving fish to kid vs teaching kid to fish
Also the difference between using an axe all year vs taking break to sharpen the axe
Obviously teaching kid to fish and sharpening axe looks like it takes more valuable time (it is the perception), but in the end it provides more benefits.
3- With every regression, we kept in contact with our pediatrician and discussed about it. Always discuss any issues with pediatrician to ensure kids milestone is on target. It can be unsafe to blindly take suggestions from social media.
PS:
NCS exists within all of us and while the intent of this post is to be constructive, there are hard days where you have to let NCS vent.