What Does Your 1 Year Old Eat?

When my son was one (he is two now), he would feed himself (without a spoon). He refused to let me feed him. This is a good thing! So give her food that she can feed herself. When he was one, he loved mac and cheese and he also loved sliced bananas. Introduce the spoon (for her to feed herself) around 18 months. My son is now feeding himself by using a spoon. Practice makes perfect!

My daughter loved mandarin oranges and other types of fruit cups...I bought the sugar-free ones. My daughter also likes applesauce off a spoon. Motts makes several different flavors (strawberry, peach, etc) and they are really good. I noticed that one person suggested pb and bread. I'm not sure about your pediatrician but mine has always said no to pb before 2...this is the one thing he has always been very strict about. If I were you I would ask my pediatrician first before giving pb. Good Luck!!

My son is 1. I try to give him foods he can eat with both hands & fingers. I give him chicken nuggets cut up and give him a baby fork and he tries to eat them with the fork. I also give him pasta and sauce (i try to make ziti or rigatoni noodles since they are easier to pick up and stab with a fork). Also diced fruits and veggies work good too. My son also isn't very cordinated with silverware, but enjoys trying to feed himself. He is very independent. Certain things he only gets on bath days too...pretty much anything with tomato sauce, since a lot of it ends up in his hair and all over himself.

My son is almost 18 months, but he was eating the same finger-type foods then as now. He loves:
pineapple
blueberries
avocado!!!
quesadillas
beans
noodles
banana
cheerios
kix
raisins
bread w/peanut butter
cheese

Just give her whatever you're eating. Cut it up small enough that she won't choke, but still big enough she can pick it up. My daughter ate everything with her fingers (including oatmeal and mashed potatoes!) for ever, it seemed like! She would hold the spoon/fork in one and and use the other one to eat with. She gradually progressed to picking up the food, putting on the utensil with her fingers, taking it back off and eating it! HA!!! It was so cute to watch! I think the biggest thing is to not be too worried about the mess. She will get dirty, the highchair will get dirty and the floor will get dirty. It's just part of learning to self feed. Keep giving her a wide variety of foods and she'll figure out the spoon/fork eventually!

My 13mo. old son loves to eat avacado right out of the peel.

I also mix small chunks of cooked carrots with applesauce, 1 scoop formula and baby oatmeal with water all together and microwave it. He loves that. He will eat the oatmeal with any fruit and vegetable mixed in (mashed well).

He has just started liking me to make him mini sandwiches with bread and just jelly or cream cheese or something like that.

He like blueberries cut in half. He also eats banana and avacado together on each spoonful.

He also likes cottage cheese and yogurt mixed together.

Good luck, I have a hard time with my son eating stuff too. He only has two teeth, which makes it hard.

Unsweetened applesauce, some with other fruits (Motts makes them and they're unsweetened too)
oatmeal
dry cereal with milk, soaked until soggy
tiny pieces of cooked pasta

Finger foods:
edamame (soybeans)- dry roasted or steamed
dry cereal
Tofu cut into chunks
teeny tiny meatballs
shredded cheese
quesadillas cut into tiny pieces
tiny pieces of fruit, especially ones without peels like watermelom, mandarin oranges, peaches, pears, berries, etc)

My daughter is 20 months old now so it's hard to remember all the "first" table foods we fed her. We had terrible food issues with our son (our first) and one thing we did differently with our daughter was use a food grinder. Munchkin makes one that sells for about $10 at Target. You can grind up any table food into little easy to "chew" pieces (they come out of the top of the grinder looking like the play-doh fuzzy pumper barber station hair). Once we knew she didn't have allergies (and before she had a lot of teeth- they aren't necessary for ground food), we moved her to what we ate almost exclusively thanks to the grinder.

Just a few things I haven't seen mentioned specifically...

My daughter really enjoyed noodles at this age. She was also a big eater of fresh fruit cut into little gummable pieces...melon of all kinds especially, strawberries, quartered grapes, bananas...basically anything soft and cut down to the size of a cheerio. :)

Peas were big from the very beginning. They're soft and the right size - just steam, cool and serve as is. They continue to be our go-to veggie, along with green beans. Actually, your daughter could totally handle a green bean too - maybe split down the middle so it's not the shape of a windpipe anymore.

BEANS were an early favorite. Black, white, pintos, lentils - such a great source of iron & protein too. Just give a few at a time and sort of mash them so they're less likely to choke. I seem to remember quartering beans too but that was probably overkill...

As someone else said, chances are, he'll love picking stuff up to eat so much that it pretty much won't matter what you try.

Not sure what the allergy status is in your family but i think we tried scrambled egg yolks (without milk) at this age. They're crumbly and soft and good protein/fat.

Good luck!
J.

I'm 30 and have done the same thing with all 3 of my kids that my mom did with me; they eat what we eat. My youngest is 13 months and just the same as my older two, eat what we eat. There are some exceptions. I made shrimp a week ago and the crazy child wouldn't eat it. We went out for Chinese on Sunday and she loved it. Her pediatrician even said peanut butter is now considered ok for little ones without pb allergies in their family history. Just don't think she won't like something just because you don't or someone else says she won't. She'll let you know what she wants!

All my kids refused a spoon (either themselves or someone else holding it) by 11-12 months old. They preferred their fingers. Most started using the spoon somewhat well by 18-20 months though so it's just a short phase.

As to what they were eating... whatever the family was eating. By 8-9 months we'd just cut everything up into pea-sized pieces (no teeth until after 1st birthday so they had trouble taking bites) and put on their plate. No special food or anything... just whatever the rest of the family was having for meals and snacks.

Our pediatrician always said that kids should be 100% self-feeding (with fingers or spoon or fork) 'normal' family food by their 1st birthday. Our kids all hit that point a few months before that.

Oh... try a fork instead of a spoon. Spoons are harder for them to manage. Our kids mastered forks by 10-11 months old because it's easy to stab things and they stay on. Stuff slides off the spoon until they master the wrist motion to keep it upright all the way to the mouth.

My son had the same trouble. I combed through the grocery store in search of anything with small bites and these things were very successful for us!

Delmonte makes a jar for the fridge of mixed fruits in small bites.. my son likes the cherry mixed fruit. It stays good for several months, which is helpful.
Then we also get some things in the baby food section- like the small cereal bars that come in apples & cinnamon or straw. and banana
They also have these corn puff things that look like cheetos and they're veggie flavored or cheese flavored.

He also loves bananas, strawberries cut up, mandarin oranges from the jar, string cheese or we get the bags of "crumbles" that are supposed to be for salads.. he loves those.
-scrambled eggs with cheese in them,
-toast with butter,
-pancakes.. soft and very easy to make!.. light on the syrup.
-I also found little tiny "Kidz" portions of microwaveable chef Boyardee.. like spaghetti-O's and things like that.
-hot dogs cut up into tiny pieces with ketchup and mustard.
-the little individual portion sizes of the Easy-Mac.
-And finally, the meats out of the can, like turkey and chicken and salmon. He will eat that straight from the can and they make them in tiny little cans now, too so you don't waste too much food.

Hope that helps! And yeah, feed her things from your plate, as long as you cut them up!

J.,

Try french toast. You can even poke holes in the bread so that the eggs is further infused into the bread. Then cut it into little pieces for her. Sweeten a little with syrup. Yum.

If it's a matter of her not eating, try limiting the liquids until after lunch and dinner. My son was a terrible eater until we went cold turkey on the milk. He didn't get any drinks until he filled his belly with some table food. It was a hard couple of days, but he's now on the road to normal toddler eating.

Good luck,
J.

We started finger foods around 8 months and my son hardly wanted to be fed by spoon by 10 or 11 months. He was so happy to feed himself! It's also not too soon to let her try to use a spoon or fork. Just cover her or take off her shirt and let her at thick oatmeal, yogurt, mashed potatoes...
Steaming vegies like carrots and squash sticks make them soft and easy to eat by hand.
Any fruit cut up in to bite-sized pieces.
Pieces of avacado.
Shredded or diced cheese.

They don't need jarred foods after 9 or 10 months and can eat almost anything you eat for your meal. Really, anything either cut up or shredded is find at this point. Cook meats in a slow-cooker so they are REALLY tender and then shred it with a fork for her. And the easiest way to introduce using a fork is to dice a slice of bread and put a fork in each piece so she can pick up each one without having to learn how to stab!