![]() ![]() There are several research-backed advantages to baby led weaning, including the likelihood of having more adventurous (read: less picky!) eaters, faster motor-oral development, and ease for parents. ![]() We used the baby led weaning approach with my two daughters and were very successful. I'm all for the self-feeding approach, as are many other dietitians. Is Baby Led Weaning Better Than Spoon Feeding? How did babies learn to eat before the invention of rice cereal and purees? By eating soft foods that their parents ate! It may seem counterintuitive if all you've ever known is purees for young babies, but if you think about it, it's not a new concept. You read that right - no purees, no rice cereal, no coaxing baby to open his mouth for one more bite of grey-green mush! They are guided by their own hunger and fullness cues, rather than a parent or caregiver pushing a spoon into their mouths until the jar or bowl is empty. With BLW, babies use their hands to pick up age-appropriate foods and put them into their mouths themselves. A better term is probably baby-led feeding, since babies are not actually being weaned from milk at this stage. With this approach, babies are in control of what and how much they eat. ![]() ![]() The approach was popularized by Gill Rapley, who has done extensive research on the topic. Baby led weaning, also called self-feeding (or BLW), is an approach to starting solids that skips the purees and spoon feeding altogether and goes straight to finger foods when babies are around 6 months old. ![]()
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