Weaning: The tips that helped me, and the tips that should have!

Thursday 19th of September 2013 | Category: Opinion | Written by: Siobhan Thomas

Reading last week’s news articles about research into processed baby foods got me thinking about weaning. In about 8 months’ time I will be doing it all over again and I will need to remind myself what worked for me, and what might have worked better had I followed more such sensible advice.

The news last week revealed that of 479 shop-bough baby foods ‘most contained fewer nutrients than homemade food, and only as much as the breast milk they were supplementing.’ Surely this isn’t a big surprise to anyone, but it is a good reminder not to become dependent on the convenience of ready meals and to remember a few of the ‘good ol’ fashioned’ basics when it comes to getting your babies and toddlers going on food.

Here are the biggies that helped me:

Make your own

Yep, definitely slightly harder than buying the jars – or much harder if you set yourself crazy objectives in the recipe department. But…

There are tonnes of things that you can do that are easy
It’s cheaper – often significantly so
You know what’s in it. It’s much easier to turn a blind eye to unhealthy ingredients on a jar

Cook in bulk, freeze lots of batches and learn a few emergency shortcuts for when you’re tight on time. A good one is to use a frozen rice & vegetable steam bag – zap the bag, throw it in a pan with an egg and serve up some vegetable egg fried rice with no hidden nasties in 3 minutes. Handy.

Persevere

Whatever method of weaning you child, whatever your objections are, stand by your intentions. Don’t let others tell you you’re doing it wrong and don’t be disheartened by the (many) difficult days that you can have when it comes to food and children.

If at first it gets declined – give it to them again!

Nutritionist Yvonne Wake suggests giving a child a certain food ten times before accepting that they don’t like it. Children change their minds from one day to another and their willingness to eat a food is influenced by so many factors – flavour or texture of the food, whether others are eating it, whether they are familiar with its appearance, and of course their mood! Whatever you do, don’t fall into the pattern of offering alternatives to their meals if they don’t want what is offered. Children of all ages soon learn the art of holding out for something more appealing if they know you will give in!

Lead by example

It’s hard to eat together all of the time, but there are easy ways to make sharing at least some of your meals part of your routine. Breakfast and lunch are usually easier in this respect than dinner. Your child, even as a very young baby, will learn so much by watching you eat – especially when it comes to manners. It’s also a really good habit to get into as a means of spending time together, once your child is able to talk it’s a valuable opportunity to have a conversation with them – and the topics of choice with a toddler are much more entertaining than with most adults!

First tastes of chocolate – for whose benefit?

I was once told to think about the first time I intended to give my new baby their first sweet treat a baby being fed , and to consider what my motivations for doing so ought to be. They’ll love it right? So why not let them have a treat? But if your ten month old baby is already excited by the prospect of a plate of peas or a handful of blueberries, what exactly is there to be gained from introducing them to processed sugary foods? Of course you will get instant gratification from them when they try their first ice cream, and that is rewarding at the time, but if you introduce them too early it is highly likely that you will begin to reset their preferences for certain foods and pay the price when it comes to getting them to eat the ‘right stuff’.

Mind the sugar!

The research published last week in relation to processed baby foods highlighted the amount of sweet ingredients used in many of the recipes. Children are naturally prone to liking sweeter foods, and the more sugar we offer them, the more their palate becomes accustomed to a sweeter diet. It’s tempting to offer lots of fruit in the early days – mainly because it is more willingly accepted by most children, but remember that even fresh fruit has a high sugar content and it will affect their taste for other food groups. If you start them off on more bitter tastes you will have a broader base from which to build their palates from going forward. There's a handy chart here for comparing the sugar content of different fruits.

No no’s

I took the baby led weaning approach with both of my children – in my friends’ words the ‘full on version of BLW’ i.e. I never put any food in their mouths at all, I let them feed themselves from the start. Cue food covered floors, ceilings, walls and babies 3 times a day, 7 days a week. In part this was down to their (seemingly slowly) developing coordination, but much more than that the mess was usually caused by deliberate dropping and lobbing of food for their own entertainment. It took me ages to get the hang of not reacting to these infuriating games, despite them obviously enjoying my ever more desperate pleas of ‘no!’. But of course, to a baby, any reaction is a good reaction, they’re just enjoying generating one. The age old mantra of ‘praising good behaviour and ignoring bad behaviour’ is useful in many scenarios with babies but never more so than in the highchair!

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Before you file my blog under ‘B’ (Boastful, thinks she did it all right), let me correct the balance. There are plenty of tips and rules of thumb that I didn’t follow, and which I probably ought to have done. The one on my mind right now revolves around sibling disputes ( I had to sign forms at nursery this morning explaining the matching facial scratch marks the two of them were sporting after another spat) but no, sorry this blog is meant to be about weaning. And there is still a lot I have to get right on that front too.

Don’t take it personally

It often feels as though there is a correlation between the amount of time you spend preparing food and the chances that it will be refused, moaned about or ceremoniously launched in the air. Maintaining a positive demeanour when children won’t eat, don’t want to sit in the high chair or won’t stop whinging is really hard, but it’s by far the best approach. Matching like for like in the volume department can be tempting but it is seldom effective for changing their behaviour. And if you ever find your emotional state driven to such despair that you decide to gain their sympathies by throwing your own tantrum and pretending (or not) to cry – don’t. There is nothing more humiliating than putting on an Oscar winning performance of heartfelt distress only to be greeted by a baby laughing right back at you or a toddler clapping and shouting ‘more’! Trust me.

Don’t use pudding as a bribe

Or a threat… Various gurus warn against the approach of ‘if you don’t eat your dinner you won’t get your pudding’. It puts an unhealthy emphasis on the value of pudding – it’s got to be good if I have to eat my main course first, right? It also blurs the lines between finishing eating when you’re full and finishing in order to gain a reward – in this case more food. But when they’re deliberately playing up and you know they really value their yogurt… it’s tempting to bribe them with dessert, and perhaps that’s why mine do value their yogurt so much!

Don’t give pudding at every meal

This follows on from the last point, obviously we don’t all have pudding after each meal, but it is easy to lead a baby or toddler to believe that you should. When my 2 year old recently requested pudding after her porridge I had to accept that I had fallen into this trap!

Easy cheesy

So I cooked with baby stock cubes, I never gave them salty snacks (in fact they still eat the baby rice cakes at 3 & 2) and I was careful to avoid the easy staples such as baked beans for as long as I could. But cheese, it’s so easy to add it to everything, and it’s easy to end up giving it to children every day. There’s a great report here on the salt content of cheese to remind you (and me) to take more consideration over how you use it.