9 Month Old Reluctant to Move past Baby Food

My son is the same age and the same way. everyday I give him something he can eat on his own and he never wanted to pick it up. I would put it in is hand and put his hand to his mouth and now he has started to realize what he can do. every once in a while i still have to remind him he has to do it..he just want me to feed everything to him..he does still play in it but he has the idea down and we just let him eat what he wants. i am a first time mom and i have no idea what i am doing..lol......it worked for us....

cheerios. this develops his pincher fingers and will help him discover all the fun there is to feeding himself.

If you're sure he has favorites in the baby food, then choose the next step up in them the ones with chunks. Feed him for 5 minutes then give him the spoon and bowl. Once you build up his confidence that he can reach for anything and feed himself then he's going to be more adventurous in reaching for stuff from your plate and that will make transitioning even easier. When he does reach for stuff from your plate, scoop it up and put some on his plate. This takes extra effort on your part to make it baby safe but it's the easiest way to transition him.

Yes it's messy but he's a boy and boys are going to be messy, you need to get used to cleaning up after them now.

I have a 10 and a 1/2 month old son who sounds much like your 9 month old. He will eat solid food now, but before if anthing beside pureed baby food touched his mouth he would gag, and I mean, until he threw up, and the food didn't even have to go inside his mouth, just touch his mouth or tongue. It took quite a few trys, but eventually he came around. I read somewhere that it can take up to ten trys of a new food before a baby will decide he or she likes it. My experience has been that that statement may actually be true. My son will turn his face away at a food, then I'll try it a week or so later and he'll eat it without issue. Somehow he has become a Cheerio's addict, it seems. Anyway, it just took time for him to come around. If he gagged or turned away, he ate pureed baby food that time and we waited a few days on the new item and tried it again. His favortite thing to eat now is the Pasta Pickups (i think) made by Gerber (gerber graduates?)... he loves the spinach and cheese ravioli, although i do quarter the pieces and feed it to him from a plastic baby fork.

Two things. First Munchkin makes this little device that has a handle and a meshy net thing that you can put fruit or steamed veggies in and they can suck on it like a lollipop. You can put in there the things that he's already liking to eat and maybe that will encourage him to feed himself. Also, I've just started making my own baby food with a food processor. I love the book "Top 100 Baby Purees" by Annabel Karmel. Until I started doing this my 10 month old wouldn't eat anything other than fruit. The fresh foods taste so much better. Now he's eating lentils, chicken, brocolli, sweet potatoes, corn, green beans...you name it. Her recipes make larger batches so you can do a lot of cooking on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and freeze it for the week.

try making some baby food, i dont use jarred food with my dd and she gets more of a variety b/c i make mango, kiwi, peaches, apples, bananas, butternut squash, sweet pot, mash pot, pumpkin, theres more but righ tnow my mind is blank... but i mix 2 diff kinds together and she gets a variety and now i mixin meat with it and she eats more... finger foods she just started feeding them to herself so now we're doing grilled cheese, toast, cheerios, stuff like that.