Hi everyone. My 18-month old baby girl downright refuses to feed herself with a spoon or fork. She refuses to even pick it up. She feeds herself most finger foods, but not all. Most of the time she will point to what she wants or grab our hand to pick it up and feed it to her. I remember that she already started picking up a spoon before, when she was about 12-14 months. She even tried to feed herself, but now she gets upset if we try to tell her to take the spoon or certain finger foods herself. I think she is capable of doing it, but just does not want to for some reason. Also, we give her milk in the bottle in the morning and at night and she also started to refuse to hold it. She can for sure, because she did before and now does once in a while when I trick her into it, but she does get upset when we try to make her hold the bottle herself. She does fine with her water in a cup (sippy with the straw). Hard finger foods like crackers or cookies are fine too. She is normally developed otherwise and I really think she is capable of using utensils and picking up all finger foods herself, but why she refuses to do it and gets upset is the question. My husband and I both work full time and my mother and mother-in-law take turns in taking care of her. They both have to feed her everything since she refuses to do it herself as well.

Anybody has any similar experience and / or advise on how to teach / encourage her to feed herself without upsetting her?

Thank you!

I started by putting the food on the spoon for my DS, and then giving the spoon to him to navigate to his mouth.  He's 18 months old, and he will try to feed himself sometimes, and sometimes I do it just to get the meal over in less than 45 min.  lol  I would say not to force her.  Put a spoon on her tray with every meal, and show her how you want her to use it, when she does, praise-praise-praise and clap!  Even if the food falls into her lap.  :)  Other than that, what I have learned is that they need to be adept with utensils by 2 years old.  A LOT can happen in 6 months.  Right now they are just really experimenting with things.  And making MESSES! 

Good luck!

i recently went through this with my 22 month old daughter i knew she could do it on her own but she refused partially i think because she wanted me to feed her since i feed her 6 month old baby brother and well she knew i would give in just so she would eat. for months i would make her hold the spoon or fork and help her get food on the and guide it to her mouth but she still pretty much refused to do it she would just whine for me to feed her so finally a couple weeks ago i had enough there just isnt time to feed her, feed my 6 month old and actually get to eat myself and she is at an age she should be doing it herself so i simply refused to do it and yes we went through several meal times with her having meltdowns but when she saw i wasnt going to give in she started doing it on her own just like i knew she could granted sometimes its messy and takes longer to get through a meal but at least she is doing it for herself! and she looked so proud of herself that she actually did it and got lots of praise and attention from mommy and daddy! good luck