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Baby Led Weaning Book Report

Decent Essays

I chose to read, Baby-led Weaning: the essential guide to introducing solid foods and helping your baby to grow up a happy and confident eater by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett for my parenting book report. Baby-led weaning (BLW) is essentially giving the baby the control to choose when, how, and what they want to eat. According to the authors BLW has many benefits that include: its enjoyable for both parents and babies, its natural, babies learn about foods, learn how to eat safely, learning about the world, reaching their potential with hand eye coordination, gives babies confidence to make their own decisions, trusting food, allows babies to be apart of family meals, helps with appetite control, better nutrition, long-term health, learning …show more content…

They find that this makes it unclear of when we should move solid foods into their mouths, because no parent would actively prevent their child from walking why should they prevent or push their child into learning to eat solid foods quicker or later. The authors suggest that parents give children the freedom to try solid foods as they would give them the freedom to try walking, talking, crawl, etc. The book gives tips on how to give them food, such as in long pieces, food from all food groups, many varieties of food, giving them time to explore, and encourage the exploration even if it is a little messy. The authors predict that babies will start the process around 6 months. However, it is important to remember every child is different, some will be ready sooner and some will be ready later than others. Through studies the babies eventually moved from playing with the food to eating the food near 9months, in which they had a wide range of foods they would eat. The authors find that babies will equip themselves with the skills they need to feed themselves with solid foods at the right …show more content…

First of all, I think it could be difficult to have babies eat with the whole family because the focus it is not on the baby. This could be good in that the baby is not always getting attention or learning they will get all the attention whenever they want it, but also could be dangerous if the baby does decide to swallow food before they figure out chewing first. Time could be an issue as well, most families are busy and do not have the time to sit and wait for their babies to play with their food. Infants are starting to explore their sensorimotor skills and need the time to do so. According to Piaget’s six sub stages of sensorimotor development, from the 1to 4 months’ babies are in the first habits and primary circular reactions stage in which they repeat a body sensation that was first experienced by chance. The stage babies will start BLW is secondary circular reactions. In this stage the infant becomes more object-oriented, moving beyond self-preoccupation, and the repeated actions bring the infants fascinating or satisfying results. The BLW seems to promote this stage of sensorimotor development through exploration of different

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