I Have a 10 Month Old Who Wants to Eat What We Are Eating and Nothing Else...

You know, my kids were both eating table food before they were 1. Especially my youngest. She was a lot bigger than my oldest daughter and she was always hungry. Plus, she didn't like baby food. I couldn't really blame her since I think it smells so bad anyways. But, as long as she can chew the food (or gum it) I think its ok. You do have to be careful about eggs, peanuts, raisins, and things like that but other than that I think you should let her try the food.

I wouldn't worry. She's seen the good life of food outside of jars and she wants some. ;-) Lots of moms are skipping jarred food all together and just feeding their babies finger food from the time they can pick it up on their own.

C., I am a mother of three. I have a 16yr old, 2 yr old, and 11 mth old. I have given all my children table food at the age of 6 mths. My last one probably started early. She loves food. My doctor said that was fine. I tried to give them baby food but they never liked it. I feed them things like macaroni, noodles, soup, finely cut hot dogs, chetto puffs, mashed potatoes, fruit. I could go on and on. Let me know if I can be of any other help. ____@____.com

Poor kid :) I would not be eating the baby food either !!!!!!!!!!! I am sure it is pretty nasty, have you ever tried that food, your baby is telling you something. If your baby is ready for regular food, I dont see why not she cant eat it. Just smash it pretty good so she does not choke on the food. If you really researched how they make the baby food and what they put in it, you would probably would not give her that food. It has preservatives that make people fat, it is not fresh, they put flavoring to pretend it tastes like real food. I would probably be giving my baby what i eat, I am sure
is a lot fresher than the canned stuff. If she wants it she is ready, just make sure is smash, soft, and chewable :) !!!!!!!! And if she eats it and spits it out, it is ok, she is just learning about the tastes.

When your eating dinner, give her small bites of what your having to see if she'll eat it. My son was 9 months when we started him on table food. (he's now almost 14 months) His favorite was chicken and green beans, they were things we could cut up small and he was able to feed himself. Since she's got several teeth, why not try the gerber graduates ravioli, they are easy to mush with gums or teeth. In all honesty, I probably don't feed my son as nutrional well as I could. He likes mac & cheese, hot dogs (I buy the turkey ones), grilled cheese, cheese sticks, cereal bars, pancakes, yogurt. Pretty much anything that I can cube up and is easy to chew!

Hi,
There are a ton of foods out there that she can eat. A few that I can think of just off the top of my head are: cottage cheese, yogurt, toast, peas, shells and cheese, spaghetti, tapioco pudding, the yellow part of the egg which you could hard boil or fry just make sure you take the white part off. chopped up fresh banana or peaches. small chopped up pieces of cheese and grapes probably depending on how many teeth she has. But it sounds like she is ready! I hope I was at least a little help to you.
M.

Let her eat off your plate. My little girl quit eating baby food at 7 months and no teeth! I just try and cook a little healthier and let her eat off of my plate. I didn't feed her anything with eggs but she eats everything now-which is great. If I want convenience I get the Gerber graduates apples, carrots and green beans and buy the peach cups and applesauce cups for kids. Bananas and avocados are easy safe and healthy. Be happy--I am a pediatric therapist and see countless numbers of 2 and 3 year olds who are still on baby food--your girl is just independent!

hey C.,
I had the same problem with my now 13 month old. And that is when my friend introduced me to the baby food grinder. we bought one at walmart but the better place to get one is like baby's our us. They are better quality. it will grind the meat or veggies up and then add a little water to the right moisture and they are happy. Shoot I skipped the baby food all together and saved so much money. It will be a great buy! Good luck!

I will tell you thast when my daughter was 10 months old she threw away her bottle and we had to start feeding her only regular food because she refused to eat baby food anymore. Our Dr. said it was fine because her body was telling her she was ready. Listen to your child because she knows what she is ready for.

Lol.... where do you live and when is her birthday? I live in Enid my lil girl is the same way.... her bday is in march... just curious.... i don't really have any friends here.. would be nice to get to know you... Hugs, T.

My youngest son had nothing to do with baby food, and I had a hard time getting my oldest to eat veggies that weren't babyfood. If I had an other baby I would just skip the baby food. It is easier and cheaper to just feed a baby table food.
I know this might sound gross, but you can kind of pre-chew some food for your baby. All I would do is use my front teeth to mush up things like small bits of chicken.
One other thing. When my oldest was still a baby, we would still eat junk food while he ate heathier things. Well, now that he is 3 that doesn't fly. We eat a little heathier and he gets to eat a little more junk food. That's how it has worked out for us. Goodluck to you.

I started giving my first son table food at about that age, and now Im giving my second son table food alot earlier, six months!!
It all depends on the child and how they handle it. It seems to me that if she is eating #3 food well and expressing an interest in table food than she is more than ready.
I would start off with things like macaroni noodles, cheerios and those Gerber Graduates. I used the pasta pick-ups and cut them up into 4's at first, but he caught on very quickly. My second son so far has only had mashed up table food, but I always let him eat what we are eating as long as it isnt too spicy.
Good luck!!

My pediatrician told me table food like mashed potatoes, soft cooked pasta, soft cooked vegetables, and so on, are okay for them at this age. I would check with your child's doctor or something to make sure you don't give her something that could cause an allergic reaction, like eggs or honey or peanut butter. However, if you wnat your child to eat healthy, you are probably going to have to change your own eating habits. She will eat what you eat, no matter how you try to encourage her otherwise. If you are eating junk, she will eat junk. If she sees you eating healthy food, that is what she will want. If you start out now giving her what is good for her she will get used to eating that way, and hopefully it will carry over into adulthood. Good luck!

i started feeding my son table food when he was 3 months old~ things like mashed potatoes and gravy and such. It wont hurt her to eat stuff you eat(minus fast food) just make it where she won't choke on it~ good luck on your baby girl~ my oldest is now 19 and 6'4" and 300lbs of all muscle so i guess he was raised ok... oh and let her eat scrambled eggs and such if she can...

C.:

I hate to break it to you, but if you want your daughter to eat healthy foods, you have to cut out the McDonalds, fast food....(at least in front of her :-)). You are you child's greatest role model. She will mirror what you do (do as I say, not as I do doesn't fly). This is a great chance for you to start making healthier food options, that will be the basis for her diet. Avacado, bananas, brown rice with peas, soft cooked veggies.........there are so many things that she could start on. When she turns a year, and is on all table food, just slightly alter your dinner for her. Good news-pizza can actually be healthy. Make home-made pita pizza's (or make it on an english mufin). When she gets older, she can help make her own! Good habits start now..
A. L

Both of my girls ate Stage 1 and Stage 2 foods okay, but neither would eat Stage 3. They just refused. It is not so hard to find healthy foods to introduce. We microwave frozen vegetables every night and our girls (now 3 1/2 and 1 1/2) will eat green beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and peas. With a 10 month old you just need to cook them long enough to make sure they are very soft and then chop into small pieces. I also use pre-cooked, frozen chicken breasts often. You simply can microwave and chop into small pieces and then "hide" in grilled cheese sandwiches, mac & cheese, or quesadillas (whole wheat tortillas have more fiber) or even on pizza! Again, just cut into very small pieces. You can also get frozen spinach in bags now that is easy to add to quesadillas or mac and cheese and it's good for the grown-ups, too! Another snack I offer often is a mixture of nonfat plain yogurt with some fruit flavored yogurt. Mixing them tames the tartness of the plain stuff but has less sugar than the fruit kind. Just a few easy ideas to help you out!

As long as it's semi soft or cut into small enough pieces, at this point she should be able ot eat about anything. What we did is give her SOME of what we were eating, right off our plates, so she could see it. We almost always gave her bread, which for a while she wouldn't eat at all because she had SO much of it. lol

If you have vegetables, just cook hers longer so they will be softer. Lucy eats broccoli, spinach, and LOVES salad now. She eats celery too. Almost any vegetable we give her, she will eat...fruit too. It helps that my father is diabetic and shares his snacks with her. Of course, she's almost 3, so her options are less limited. You might also try taking the baby food out of the jar when she can't see you, putting it into a "serving" bowl, and put a spoonful on your plates, so she thinks it is what you are having too.

Now is the time to start her on a lifetime path of healthy eating! There are so many choices! I have an eleven month old. Some of his favorites include boneless skinless chicken breast, whole grain wild rice, broccoli florets well cooked, shaved apple, peas, green beans, whole grain pasta with or without sauce and yogurt. The list goes on and on! I have included a link to an article that might be helpful. Also, if it is available from your local library, there is an excellent article in the October 2006 issue of Parents magazine. It offers 52 nutritional finger food choices. I clipped it out of my magazine and I refer to it when I feel like I am in a "food funk" with my own little one. It's a great resource to have on hand and it would be easy to photcopy!

Hope some of these suggestions help! Good luck!

http://www.parents.com/parents/story.jhtml?storyid=/templ...

PS: If you are interested in the article and cannot find it I would be more than happy to send you a copy in the mail! Just let me know!! :)

10 months is fine to be eating table food. As long as she has the teeth for it, no problem. Just make sure meat is very tender and in little chunks and everything else is a small enough piece that she will mash it down and not choke on it. You still want to be careful about extra salt and sugar, and make sure that she's getting a balance of different fruits and veggies, healthy fats and proteins. But she doesn't have to be eating baby food at all. All baby food is is ground up table food! Watch highly allergic foods like eggs and dairy and wheat, strawberries, unless you already know she's fine with those.

love,
Missy

My daughter is also 10 months old and she would rather have table food rather than # 3 baby food....which really stinks because I just went and bought some!! She just got her 7th tooth and I let her have (when appropriate) table foods. She loves to eat(totally supervised!) macaroni & cheese, mashed potatoes, french fries, anything that she can pick up with her fingers. I would definately let her start eating table foods. She will be getting enough nutrition from either nursing or formula that she drinks so let her have at it.
If your still leary about giving her some of these foods my daughter LOVES to eat pudding!! It's a really big hit!!
Good Luck
B.

My daughter is 2, and I'd say by the time she was 10 months was mostly eating table foods. I feed my daughter a lot of healthy foods, but she is also exposed to foods that aren't organic or necessarily healthy. She loves cottage cheese, avocadoes, yogurt, apples, etc....But she also loves gummy worms, fries, and chips. Moderation is the key. If you don't ever give your child these foods, once she gets to preschool or kindergarten and other kids are bringning these items in their lunches, for parties, or she goes to their house to play, she may gorge herself on them because they have always been denied to her. Of course, some of the foods that adults eat shouldn't be fed to babies, and my two-year old still doesn't eat some foods, mainly shellfish, because I don't want her to develop allergies. Some things to avoid that a lot of people don't know are raw carrots (too hard), raisins, popcorn (can choke on the kernel), peanut butter (allergies and too thick, can choke), and of course there are more well-known that you probably already know of, too. Good luck!

dear C.: I am a grandmother raising my grandson. I'm old school. when my grandson was 8 mo. old, he had 4 teeth. He never really liked baby food. I didn't buy it, I took what we ate (veggies, fruit, meat) and put it in the food processor. but even then he wanted table food. my advise (and according to his doctor is fine) is to give him table food that has been cut small, and let him feed himself. just watch the salt and sugar. make sure it is soft food at first. his doctor said that his weight was right in the 50% range for his age. It not only saves money (baby food can get expensive), but you know exactly what he is eating and it gives him the opportunity to try new foods. good luck, just remember he will make a mess feeding himself. usually i have a tub ready for him after he eats. kids love finger foods. have fun and enjoy the mess. it makes for great pictures.

My son absolutely hated stage 3 foods. He would not eat them. Refused! He was 9 or 10 months when we started him on table food completely. Of course, I had to modify some things for him and keep his stuff really bland, but I felt like whatever it takes to get him to eat works for me. He has not had any problems, health or otherwise, and is a very good eater. As a matter of fact, he is 3 years old and his fave foods are broccoli and yogurt! If you want some ideas for table food adaptations, let me know and I will be happy to share. Best of luck to you on that.
Also, I know a lady who is a stay at home, work at home mom who helps other moms get started. If you are interested, let me know. I am starting next week with part time, so as long as we don't have to be homeless, that is my plan.

I think you need to think about what you are saying. You are saying that it's ok for you to eat junk food that does the body no good at all. But it's not ok for your child? That would be like telling your child not to smoke as your lighting up. If your going to eat that nasty food then your child is going to do it too. Kids learn much more by what they see us do than by what we tell them to do. Idealy though, those 2 things should match.

Now, saying that.... I have raised 4 girls. My girls eat extremely well. My youngest eats the best of them all. She likes all sorts of things most kids would not like fish, spinach, vegatables of all kinds, soups that are loaded with veggies and I could go on and on.

If you can cut it up small enough and your child is swallowing ok, then feed it to her! I let my baby learn how to eat in soup and salad restaraunts. I loved nothing more than to give her all sorts of things to choose from. Needless to say she likes salads and frankly, I can't think of anything she would not eat off the top of my head.

Suzi

when my son turned 6 months, our pediatrician told us we could start giving him a little bit of whatever we were eating...just break it into small pieces...he never did like stage 3 baby food

She is definitely old enought to start table food. Both of my kids hated stage 3 foods, so we skipped them and went to table food. Cooked veggies and soft fruits such as bananas and canned fruit work well, as well as mashed potatoes, yogurt, shredded cheese. She may not like meat yet, but you can try finely shredded chicken or beef. My doctor says to try anything you think they will not choke on.

Don't be surprised if she eats table food well at first, but then becomes very picky between 18 months and 3/4 years old, since their tastes change, they would rather play than eat and they try to exert independence during the toddler years. The key to overcoming pickiness is to keep giving her healthy foods, even if she refuses them. After a while, she will get use to the taste and texture of these foods and will begin to eat them. Experts say that it can take 10-12 times of being exposed to a new food before a baby will eat it. To aleviate some of the food battles, we always give my kids something they like with every meal - usually fruit or a cracker and then add other healthy veggies and meat. Sometimes they eat it all and sometimes they pick at it - just like adults they have days that they are more hungry than others.

Introducing new foods can make you anxious and frustrated, so just be patient and persistent and good habits will form on their own. Good luck.

Girl, when you give them a taste of flavor, they don't want anything else except maybe the deserts. I'd say he's fine, just make sure everything is bitesize and watch his stoolmake sure he's not getting constipated and watch his weight, you don't want a Fat Albert!! lol. Seriously, my kids were the same way. they just don't eat by the book anymore

I also have a 10 month old. At our 9 month check up I mentioned this and our Dr, said he is trying to tell us he is done with baby food and to just start feeding him what we eat. He took to it excellently. He eats everything we do that he can pick up...stew, chicken and dumplings, pancakes, sausage, mac & cheese, grilled cheese, hot dogs cut up in teeny tiny pieces and lots more. I hope this helps you. Life has gotten so much easier now that he can eat what he wants. By the way he has 8 teeth, but 6 should do the job just as well.

M.

Feed her table food. It won't hurt her as long as you are making sure not to give her anything spicy or undercooked. Also make sure to give her small bites and watch her closely. My son never wanted baby food, so he really never got it after about 5 or 6 months. As to what to feed her, go with fruits, veggies, meat, just remember that homecooked is best. It doesn't have to be a gourmet meal, just relatively healthy. Good luck!

One thing that helps is to get her on the same schedule as when the rest of the family eats. My daughter is 10 months old and all she wants is foods that she can feed herself. Shes been eating table foods for a few months now. Some of her favorites that I cut up into small pieces are bananas, pears, plums, lunch meat, crumbled cheeses, cherrios, pancakes, cooked veggies(I found walmart/schnucks sell individual size cans and containers that can be microwaved), yogurt, applesauce and any meat. Good luck.

My daughter started eating mostly table food by around 9 months. She never liked baby food, but would knaw on a hunk of steak if you would let her. The key is to make sure the child is physically able to eat what you give her (chop it small, make sure she can chew, etc) and stay away from dairy products and other foods that can cause allergies (such as nuts, strawberries, etc.)

10 months was around the time that I started giving my daughter table food. She had more teeth than six though. Just make sure you give her things that are soft enough so that she won't depend on her few teeth so much. Things like pasta, breads, cooked potatoes and veggies, mac 'n' cheese (not the boxed stuff...I made homemade). Cheerios for breakfast with a banana are good too. Hope this helps a bit.

My daughter never cared for baby food... She wouldn't even take Stage 1. She was still being breastfed until around 13 or 14 months, so I figured she was getting a lot of her nutrients there.

I just started mashing up the food we were eating - not all of it, just the kind that was safe for her, and giving it to her. That way she felt like she was a part of the family. I of course was careful to add the allergenic foods later and slowly... And ask your pediatrician when it's safe to feed various types. But, also, if the baby food is offering, say little nibblets of carrots at this stage, feed her little nibblets of the carrots off your plate. Same with when the baby food stages get to meat, etc. I just watched the various labels on the baby food for their stages; didn't buy any, but took that as a guideline for what we could feed her of what we were eating...

You probably will have to change your own eating habits to be healthier if you want your child to eat healthier... You'd have to do this sooner or later anyway. We teach our children mostly by example - good or bad... Even if you eat junk food and feed her healthy food, if she sees you eating junk food, she'll be jealous and think that that's the best food, because it's what you're eating...

By all means give her table foods. There are a lot of easy table foods that you can cut up very small. For example, macaroni and cheese, eggs, spaghetti, yogurt. Being a mother of 4, I found myself even with my 2nd child giving her table foods much earlier than my first child. My pediatrician even joked that my 4th child must look at me crazy when she hears that jar open and wonder why she can't have what the other kids are having.

So....bottom line, if your child hasn't had any issues with food allergies be glad that she desires table food. It will be much easier fixing easy table food than buying the extra baby food that she won't eat anyway.

C.- Both of my boys now 3 and 1 yr refused to eat baby food from the start. I agree that they did not need to start on the unhealthy foods so early. If we had a vegetable I would chop it up in a little mini food processer that we got from Wal-Mart for $10. If it was already soft I just mashed it with a fork and feed it to them. Another idea is to buy the fat free or organic product for them. My children love hot dogs so I purchased turkey dogs instead to make it healthier. I hope this helps.

my son eats stage 3 baby food and also eats jelly sandwiches, i put jelly on one piece of bread a real thin layer i break it in small pieces and he eats it fine its been about 2 months and my son just turned 1. I started him on the gerber finger foods the ones that dissolves just to see how he would eat finger foods. he eats pieces of fruit, he loves bananas, i break them in small pieces now he holds it in his hand and bites pieces off, at 10 months he was eating jelly sandwiches, cheerios are a great food, yogurt, my son eats fries but I limit his intake of fries.

Every kid is different tho, ask your peditrician about the kinds of foods thats good to feed your child.

Hope that helps

G.

My daughter just turned a year old and has not touched baby food since she was six months old. She ate it from 4-6 months and then realized what we were eating and that was it. I even tried grinding up what we were eating so it was baby food, but she would not eat that either...it had to be what everyone else was eating. I was concerned too, but I talked with my pediatrician about it and he said as long as I make sure things are easy for her to chew and she won't choke on them then she is fine...he said it will save you money too. At first I stuck to very basic/bland things...mashed potatoes, applesauce, etc... then gradually introduced new things that had more texture. She will eat anything and everything under the sun...I have not found one thing she will not eat. Hope this helps!! Best of Luck!!

my boys started help themselves to food from my plate at this age. We just saved the baby foods for snacks after that. But we eat pretty healthy, i.e. we only eat out once every month of two. Instant mashed potatos, sweet potatos, canned green beans, peas and carrots are all good starters. If your daughter is eating the baby food version she can eat the adult version. My boys loved the spices and better flavors of the adult food. We also included fruit with their dinner until we all got burnt out on canned fruit.