How to teach a toddler to feed himself and use a spoon

Mix up meals and snacks: "Begin introducing foods that can be picked up and eaten by hand. These can include crackers, rice cakes or toddler snacks, fruit pieces, chips or potato wedges, veggie sticks such as cucumber or red pepper," says Pediatric Speech Therapist, Stacey Zimmels.

Start small: Snacks are a good way to get your tot used to aiming his food at his mouth and not up his nose: fruit or vegetables cut into handy sticks, breadsticks and raisins are great snacks to help give your child some sort of ownership over feeding himself. Later you can move onto proper meal time foods like toast, small sandwiches and chopped up chunks of cheese, meat and vegetables he can try picking up with a spoon.

Make food fun: When they’re just starting to self-feed it’s important to make sure food time is fun. Try playing ‘feed me’, chop up some finger foods and encourage your toddler to put the food in your mouth. Chew each bite enthusiastically, then feed your little one in the same way.

Lead by example: "Give a fork and spoon at each meal, model how to use it (by eating food from your own plate with cutlery) and suggest they have a try themselves," recommends Stacey. "To change a habit, you need to break a habit!"

Play with food: Yes, we did just tell you to let your toddler play with their food. But touching and playing with the food on their plate encourages your little one to be creative. Pop fruit on your fingers or stack them. The Spaghetti pick-up game is a firm favourite. Using cooked spaghetti encourages your toddler to make a shape before he puts it in his mouth. You can help by joining in and showing him how he can make various shapes or a smiley face.

Load up first: "Passing the fork and spoon – loading the utensil for your toddler and passing it to them breaks down the task of using cutlery to the final step of putting it into the mouth. Once they get used to this they can begin to master the whole skill," Stacey says.

Accept mess: If your little one is a messy eater, try to close your eyes to the chunks of food decorating the floor/the walls/the ceiling. Mess is part and parcel of the toddler years. Resist telling him off too, unless of course he’s deliberately trying to avoid eating, in which case, calmly clear away and give him some of the food again, yourself. It may be that he’s not yet ready to feed himself. After all, there’s always anti-bac wipes...

When getting started, go for a spoon with a short handle as it is easier to get it into the mouth.

Begin by loading the food onto the spoon for them and practice with thicker foods that will stay on the spoon such as mashed potato rather than penne pasta which may fall off.

To help learning to scoop, start with a bowl rather than a plate and pick one which has high sides. If you can find one which sticks the table this will help keep it stable which in turn makes using the spoon easier.