When Is a Good Time to Start "Real Food"?

I bet you'll get all kinds of different opinions on this one. My opinion is to start her on veggies first! As many as she'll eat. Save fruit and carbs for last. I have a 5 year old and 2 year old. Everyone suggested starting them on fruits but then they develop a love for sweets. My kids did like veggies too but started to reject them, one by one, starting around 18 months. Maybe if I had of started them on veggies, it would have been different. Who knows, just wanted to throw that out there. btw...they still eat ALL fruits and hardly any veggies. Ugh.

Now is a good time! Small soft pieces. My son was completely off baby food by eight months. He loved big people food.

T., I started my 2 year old girl around 6 months with real veggies and fruits. then you can slowly add foods like rice, pasta blended in with her favorite beggies. maybe ham and cheese for breakfast, oatmeal with fruit, you just have to go slow one food at a time to make sure she is not allergic

Go for it, girl! Just make sure it's in small pieces

My son is 8 months old and we started him on 1st and 2nd baby foods at 6 months and slowly moved to 3rds. We're now exclusively 3rds along with puffs, yogurt and yogurt melts. At around 7 1/2 months we started to cut up soft fruit into bite sized pieces for him to eat and he did fine as soon as he figured out how to pick them up (their usually a little more slipery than puffs :) ). Now we add extremely soft cooked fruits or veggies at every meal (a steamer is wonderful!). We've given him a very small piece of unseasoned chicken breast once but he wasn't able to chew it that well. He doesn't have teeth yet so if your baby does then you may have more success with it than we did. His doctor said that what we're doing is fine and with the meats to just keep trying small pieces until he figures it out. She said that we'll probably be all table food around 10-11 months. The first table foods we did were bannanas, alvacado, sweat peas (steamed), carrots (steamed) and plain oatmeal. I would say to just try little things here and there to get her interested in it then start gradually adding them to every meal while taking away a little of her baby food. I also found that it helped to make his 3rd foods a little thicker by adding a little baby oatmeal or rice cereal so that he'd start 'chewing' his food before he swallowed but it's not necessary if your daughter has teeth.

Technically, you could have already started her on people food, just blended up like in comes in the jars of baby food. She could be eating what the rest of your family eats, just smashed. Or, you could make her own food out of real food we eat. If it is fresh veggies, steam it with or without any seasoning. Puree it, pour it up in an ice cube tray and freeze. Once frozen take the blocks out and store in the freezer in a zip lock bag. One ice cube is equal to a serving. Take out, warm up, and serve.

Fruit can be done the same way, puree, freeze, etc.

When my son was a baby, I couldn't bear the thought of giving him the baby food meats. So, I took sandwich meat ham, turkey, and roast beef and chopped them up in a mini-food processor, basically emulsify it. I would give him one slice as a serving.

As she gets more teeth and you watch to make sure she is getting the chew concept down, you can let the food be small pieces instead of pureed.

No peanut butter before age 2, no raw honey before 1. I also held off on shell fish until 2. Luckily we have not discovered any food allergies in my son and he is 7 now.

As they get older, the more you vary what they eat, the more likely they will eat it as they grow.

I have 7 month old twins and we were told at their 6 month check up that it was ok to start table food, just no raw honey was their biggest caution. We started giving them some table food in the last couple of weeks and they are doing really well with it. Like other posters have commented, though, keep the pieces small enough that she doesn't choke on them, but big enough that she can feel the texture and chew on it. We actually started the biter biscuits a few months ago and they love them, and also the puff things that kind of get them used to the idea, but they kinda dissolve when they get all slobbery so you don't have to worry as much about choking. We just feed them off our plate, when I am feeding them meat, I just take and kinda shred it with my fingernails and give it to them, the girl has 4 top teeth and 2 botttom and the boy has 2 (almost 3) top and 2 bottom and the chewing is going pretty good. Just go with your gut and let her broaden her palate...

From what I have heard and learned from experience is, first, to look for signs that your daughter is ready. Does she sit up by herself? Does she grab for your fork or spoon while you are eating? I heard something about rolling her tongue but I don't recall how it was phrased.

Good things to begin with are bananas or a type of cereal (oatmeal, cheerios, etc). Absolutely do not feed any kind of honey at this time. Foods baked with honey inside is not a problem; it's the raw honey that your under-one-yr-old's stomach isn't able to handle yet.

My first child really liked frozen green peas (they are little). He liked them when he was teething and has continued to be a favorite even now at the age of 15!

I had lots of suggestions about melba toast but was cautioned not to let the "bread" become a size that might cause choking. My boys refused the melba toast but a couple of times this is what they teethed on (when the melba toast became a soggy mess, I would take it away).

Last of all, whatever is on your plate can be mashed or cut to a small size (think of the size of the cheerios honey nut cereal) and offered. I remember offering turkey, yams, bread, apple, hamburger (cooked well done), and all sorts of stuff. Besides raw honey, she is probably not ready for sticks of celery or sticks of carrots or any stringy vegetables and stuff like that.

I would advise not leaving (even small bits of) food with your daughter and leave her unattended.

Hope this helps! Have fun!