The Most Important Part of Baby-led Weaning
Introducing foods to your baby really can be FUN and cool and easy and laid-back. It doesn’t have to be urgent or make-or-break or black and white or complicated.
But it can feel that way sometimes.
It took me a good while to fully grasp the big picture of baby-led weaning. I mean, I got the idea, but joining a BLW Facebook group and the information overload that came with it caused me to constantly second guess what I thought I knew (and what I instinctively felt).
Do a simple google search of BLW and you’ll end up with a lot of information on how to slice food into strips, what food to serve first, and the best high chair for baby-led weaners. You also might find arguments about just how big to cut those strips, what the best food to serve first is, AND what high chair is actually best (the moral of the story here is try to avoid rigid BLW Facebook groups and too much googling if you can).
The most important part of baby-led weaning is the baby-led part, which encourages a healthy relationship with food right from the start.
Through my business, I work mostly with families of young babes (ages 0-3) and no matter and even if the child is already far past their first food days, I always cover baby-led weaning. A portion of my families are dealing with medical complications, many babes were born prematurely, and almost all do not have a typical kiddos growth chart. Sometimes the baby-led weaning I recommend looks a little different than what you’d typically see, and it looks a WHOLE lot different than what you’d find in most baby-led feeding Facebook groups.
Check out my book for no-stress baby-led weaning ideas: the BLW Baby Food Cookbook
What I’m calling baby-led weaning here could also simply be referred to as responsive feeding. No matter what you call it, it is at the very heart of BLW. It is allowing baby to be in charge of their intake. It isn’t necessarily perfectly sliced strips of avocado and steak, it’s sometimes puréed broccoli on a spoon controlled by mom. No matter what method you are using, feeding can be done in a baby-led way by allowing baby to remain in control of how much or how little they are eating.
I encourage families to do baby-led feeding in a way that makes sense for them. That often means starting with purées given with a spoon by the parent. Honestly I don’t care what texture the food is that you decide to offer first (as long as it’s safe), I care about the core of baby-led feeding: the feeding relationship.
The goal of baby-led feeding is to allow baby to take charge of something she is destined to be in control of. Ellyn Satter said it best with her groundbreaking but so so simple “Division of Responsibility in Feeding”:
Parents are in charge of what is served, when it’s served, and where it is served.
Baby is in charge of how much or even if they eat at any given meal.
Baby-led weaning encourages parents and babies to get used to this division of responsibility from the start because the goal with baby-led feeding extends far beyond introduction of solids. It even extends past preventing picky eating (though a baby-led approach is linked with lower incidences of selective eating). The goal is to encourage an early healthy relationship with food that could very likely lead to a toddler, child, and someday an adult with a healthy relationship with food.
Baby-led feeding is all about encouraging kids to listen to their feelings of hunger and fullness. It isn’t about rigid rules on only allowing stick shaped food onto the tray and shunning all purées.
If you’re interested in the idea of baby-led weaning, but the idea of starting with table foods makes you uncomfortable, know that you can totally ease into it by using purees first or combining them with BLW-style table foods right from the start.
For way more on combining these two methods, check out my new book Whole Food Baby Food.
Other posts on baby-led weaning:
