Responsive Spoon Feeding

What is Responsive Spoon Feeding?

Responsive spoon feeding is a way of feeding babies that honors and responds to their communication, putting baby in charge of when the food goes into their mouth. Instead of the caregiver putting the spoon into baby’s mouth, the caregiver pre-loads the spoon and waits for baby to lean in with an open mouth or grab it and bring it to their own mouth.

While messy, trusting baby to set the pace and bring the utensil to their own mouth has enormous benefits. Early trust establishes a positive relationship with food and the caregiver, which can help prevent picky eating. Responsive spoon feeding also improves baby’s hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, and, perhaps most importantly, enables baby’s brain to prepare for the food coming into their mouth.

The risk of choking increases when food—purée or otherwise—is put into baby’s mouth by a caregiver before baby is ready. Choking happens due to a miscoordination of the swallow—the brain coordinates more than 50 muscles for the swallow and while the body is set up to protect against choking, when the brain is not ready for incoming food, it can lead to a miscoordination of these muscles, leaving the airway exposed. This is one of the reasons why “tricking” babies to eat —such as by pulling out a pacifier and quickly inserting purée in the mouth—is dangerous and disrespectful.

Do I have to let go of the spoon?

Yes, we encourage you to let go of the spoon.

Babies 6+ months old instinctually reach out and explore their surroundings with their hands. It’s good to encourage that exploration. Plus, the older baby gets, the more control they seek when eating and battles often start with the spoon. The goal is to encourage positive experience with food at the table.

Wrestling to keep ahold of the spoon while baby tries to hold it causes frustration—for both caregiver and baby—and often results in food refusal and high chair distress.

Which spoons are best for responsive spoon feeding?

There’s no need to buy a special baby spoon and a short measuring teaspoon works well. If you want to buy baby their own utensils, look for utensils with short handles, as long handles which can be challenging for baby to control and direct towards their mouth. When first starting solids, consider using a spoon with a shallow bowl which fits easily in baby’s mouth.

But the food falls off the spoon…

One of the downsides of responsive spoon feeding is that you will lose some of the food in the process as baby develops the fine motor skills to steadily bring the spoon to their mouth; this process can take several months or longer. If you are exclusively spoon-feeding, explore foods that cling to the spoon easily such as oatmeal, mashed potatoes, mashed avocado, egg salad, polenta, mashed veggies and thicker yogurts like Greek yogurt. Mess is an inevitable part of learning to eat and is going to be a part of your life sooner or later. Read more on minimizing the mess.

My baby chews on the wrong end of the spoon

Let them! While it may seem like the “wrong end” of the spoon, it really doesn’t matter which end the spoon baby uses and you can even dip both ends of the spoon in purée or food to help baby feel successful at meals. Furthermore, the handles of most baby spoons are fantastic for helping baby’s brain form a mental map of the mouth and advancing jaw strength and oral motor skills.

What are the best foods for responsive spoon feeding?

The best foods for responsive spoon feeding include:

In general, avoid completely textureless foods. While the occasional pouch and smooth purée are fine, when babies are mostly fed textureless purées, they are more at-risk of developing texture aversions, severe picky eating, and often fall behind in oral-motor skills, and jaw strength—all of which are necessary skills for becoming a safe eater who chews thoroughly.

How do I know if baby is getting enough to eat?

Generally speaking, babies are getting enough to eat when:

Up until 12 months of age, the primary source of nutrition should be breast/human milk or formula and complemented by nutrient-dense solid food beginning around 6 months old. This means that even if baby eats no solids at multiple meals, they can still receive adequate nutrition from nursing or bottle feeds.

During this phase, remember that learning to eat solid foods takes time and babies will often swallow very little solids at some or many meals. Babies will continue to consume about the same volume of breast/human milk or formula as they did prior to starting solids. If you are offering baby solid food two to three times a day (or three meals and two snacks after 12 months old) and continuing to offer breast/human milk or formula feeds until around 12 to 15 months old, baby should be getting enough to eat.

If you have any concerns about baby’s weight or growth, check in with the child’s health care provider. 

When is it safe to introduce finger foods?

It’s safe to introduce finger foods as soon as baby is developmentally ready for solids.

While generations in the 1900’s often started solids with commercial baby food purées, there’s no developmental need or evidence for starting solids with purées. In fact, research shows that there’s an optimal window for introducing chewable food between 6 and 9 months of age. Around 6-9 months old, babies have a set of reflexes and oral motor mechanisms in place to support chewing and learning to eat solids. Triggering these reflexes through exploration of finger foods helps baby build tolerance to chewable foods and encourages practice of new skills, which leads to the ability to eat a wide variety of food sizes, shapes, and textures by 12-18 months old.

Research shows that waiting to introduce textured solids and chewable finger foods until after 9 months, and especially after 12 months, increases the likelihood of refusal, increases risk of picky eating, and makes it more challenging for the infant to learn these critical oral motor skills.

As long as the food is modified to be safe for baby to eat, you can introduce “real” food as soon as baby is ready to start solids, which for many babies is around 6 months of age. To learn more about how to introduce real food to babies, use our First Foods® database where you can see how to prepare and cut any food to make it age appropriate for your baby.

How do I transition from spoon feeding to self-feeding?

Depending on how long baby has been exclusively spoon-fed, the transition to self-feeding can be challenging or completely natural and seamless. Generally speaking, the longer a baby has been fed by a caregiver placing food in baby’s mouth, the trickier the transition can be. Need help starting solids? Solid Starts Compass℠ is our guided app experience to help you navigate first bites and beyond.