Need Help Transition My 12Mo Old to Table Food

start slow. and take your time. pieces of banana, pieces of those wheel pasta, or make your own, really well cooked pasta, with a bit of butter. remember baby food is blend and everything else will be shocking to him at first. get rid of the last snack before dinner if you want to try when he's really hungry. don't give him milk first as that will temporary fill him up. then put a plate in front of him with a few choices. well cooked pieces of chicken too. take a plate for yourself with the same food and start eating slowly in front of him. most likely he will follow you. \good luck

Pasatina is a good first soft pasta and dr praegers veggie patties (broccoli or spoinach or swt potato) are mushy + soft and nutritous for all ages.
Don't rush him if he's still having problems chewing.

The only thing you can really do is just keep offering. To transition, I would feed my son baby food, but put finger foods on his tray for him to eat himself. Part of learning to eat is playing with the food. Eventually the playing will land the food in his mouth. (Everything else goes in the mouth...I don't know why it seems like toys make it there more often than food does, but they do eventually get it there.) Offer finger foods like you have been....Cheerios, Puffs, pasta, etc...but also try handing him something big that he can pick up and bite, like a ripe banana or a piece of toast and see what he does. Will he eat biter biscuits? Many foods have to be introduced 20 times before they will eat them. Just keep putting finger foods on his tray when you're feeding him baby food, so that he gets to try both. Eventually, he should eat more and more of the food on his tray and you'll use less of the jar food.
Good luck.

He needs more time. My son did the same thing. he was not ready to eat table food until he was almost 18 months old. Some kids are just like that. If you keep trying to force it, he will just develop an adversion to it, so I would just keep the baby food handy for now. I used to have a small food processer that I used to blend up my sons food sometimes to help transition him into regular food, but not until he was about 16 months old.

My daughter is 15 months and she barely eats any table food too. But she is S L O W L Y eating more.
Just give her more time. Keep offering it, but do not expect miracles. In time she will eat more table food.
Hope sll goes well,
P.

Hi M., I feel your pain. I'm working through the same issue with my near-17-month-old son. He has been on the slow side in regards to adapting to table food and has a very sensitive gag reflex, but we're getting there! So, don't fret: your child won't be on baby food forever.

Key things are to be patient (with him and with yourself), ignore people's advice to withhold the baby food and offer table food only (I, personally, think it's wrong and in most instances fruitless to push kids' development) and take it slow, preparing for some backslides along the way.

Here's what is working for us: When my son was just about 13 months old, we had some success feeding him super-whipped (i.e. no lumps) mashed potatoes off of our fork. We didn't have him try to self-feed; instead we wanted him to get used to the texture and enjoy table food before asking him to feed it to himself. This strategy is working well for us, and we've been at it for four months.

With time, we have graduated to finger foods such as avocado, bits of brown bread or inside of a croissant, teething biscuits, orange that has no membrane, boiled carrots and peas, and peeled and quartered grapes. We still feed him stage 3 food and/or lentil soup and other from-the-spoon/fork foods, so we haven't yet fully transitioned to table food and self-feeding. But we try to have a good mix of both with every meal, keeping in mind that some meals end up being baby food-only; my opinion is that it's OK as long as my son is getting nourishment.

Try to take cues from your child and be prepared to take it slow. He'll let you know when he's ready for the types of foods you are offering.

Good luck!!

Hi M.,
I as many of the other moms have said, "I feel your pain". I made the mistake of introducing the spoon to my son really early (3 1/2 months) and he took to it really well. So of course I thought that the transition to solids was going to be a breeze, no such luck. Now when I try to give my 15 months old son Stage 3 baby foods, he plays with them in his mouth and spits out the solid bits :) FUN. I think that the 2 different textures of baby food with some bits of solids are confusing him, he doesn't know whether to chew or just swallow. He will eat off of my plate while we are eating, but the minute I give him his own plate, he's uninterested. I've started to blend his stage 3 baby food till it's totally smooth and trying full solids while we are eating, bits of carrots, pasta or mashed potatoes. Slow and steady. Good luck.
- M.

Mom of a wonderful, happy 15 month old.
Wife of an awesome Husband and Father

M.,
I'm assuming that you feed him out of the stage 3 jar....if so..then, my suggestion is....make some table food...mush it up and put it into one of the stage 3 jars. then feed him EXACTLY the way you would a stage 3 jar of food. Then slowly transition him to chunkier pieces of food..but still out of the jar. My son would only eat fruits out of the jar (he had 8 teeth at 9 months)...I wanted him to get into pieces of melon, apple etc. So I put all the fresh fruit into a baby food jar and approached him that way...sure enough..his mouth opened up wide and he ate every piece I fed to him. It took about a week for me to slowly transition the jar out of the picture! 2 months have passed now and we haven't had a jar of baby food in the house since! He's 11 months old and eats EVERYTHING off the table!

Hi There,
My best piece of advice is try and try again. Keep putting little pieces of food in front of him, a few different things at each meal. And, it IS ok, and actually benificial to let your child play with the food while they are learning to self feed and start table foods. It is important for development and lets them get used to textures, the smell of food etc. It often takes a toddler 15-20 times seeing a food before they put it in their mouth, let alone chew and swallow!! With my 13 month old, I give him small peices of what we are having at mealtime (when he is hungry) and let him play and experiment for a little while (he is more likely to try new things when he is hungry), but I will still give hime baby food if he clearly isn't eating much of what we are having/to make sure he gets enough (then, when he starts eating that, he sometimes is on a roll and eats more of the finger foods too). Also, sometimes my son is more likely to try foods in there "natural form", rather than cut up. For example, if he is reluctant to eat pieces of pizza, I let him have a small slice and have at it. Same thing is true for toast, chicken nuggets etc. My niece, who is the same age has a rather sensitive gag reflex, and tends to have some texture issues with fruits. We have found that if you let her bite the banana, or chew on a whole strawberry, she does much better than with little pieces. She is now accepting the little pieces more and more. One thing that might work, is letting him play with some pieces while you feed him the same food with a fork or spoon, or even let him play with a fork/spoon as well. Also, eat as a family as much as possible... he will start to show interest in whatever you are eating and give him little bits of everything. My daughter loved steamed spinich at that age and at 3 still loves it. We have introduced it to my son and he has had a little bit so far. So, don't be afraid to try anything, even if it doesn't seem "kid friendly", the sooner/more often you try things, the more receptive they will become down the road. Good Luck!

Hi M.,
My son is just under 12 months- the way I get him to eat table food is by running it through the food processor and making sure that it's not dry (so he'll eat pasta with sauce, but not plain with butter). He always makes a face when I give it to him, but I keep trying.

Good luck!

Have you tried macaroni and cheese, cheerios, bananas? These are typically easy to eat and most kids like them. You could also try cheese or yogurt or cottage cheese. Good luck!

Hello there, I know it seen hard to get the kids to change their eating habits from baby food to table food. for me when I made the changes I start out with some mash , home made patatos, with little butter and you have to eat with them also , let them see that you are eating it also, another good soft food is Pumpkin also with little butter, let them get a taste for about a week or so, start to cut out the baby food all together at feeding time, they will get used to it,also you can put little whole milk in both the potatos and pumpkim. and they will love the Hawaiian bread, because it is soft and taste good. if that don't do the trick or get it started, try some crad and lobster.