Family Meals: When Should My Baby Start Eating with the Family?

Katie Ferraro (0s):

People trying to explain baby led weaning like, oh, you just feed your baby. Exactly what you're eating. And I don't know about you guys, but like I eat tortilla chips and raw apples and red wine and babies don't so there's a little more nuance in getting our babies engaged in family meals from their first bites. That's what we're covering today. Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning here on the Baby Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (42s):

Hey guys. Welcome back. Zack. Got another interesting topic for the podcast today. This is an episode idea that one of the moms left me on a podcast review saying I'm confused about when my baby should start eating with the family. Can you do an episode on that? So here it is. When should my baby start eating with the family? Now, today, we are tackling a lot of the different areas associated with your baby. Like the logistics of eating with the family specifically, when should my baby start eating with the family? And I think one of the biggest benefits of baby led weaning is that babies can begin to eat with their family from their first bites, but the actual logistics of how that happens can be a little confusing. So that's what we're going to be covering today.

Katie Ferraro (1m 23s):

I'll be sharing some tips on how to successfully start incorporating your baby into your family's meals early on in feeding. And if you haven't been doing some of this stuff and you already got started with solids, it is not a big deal. A few of the tips and tactics that you hear in this episode, I hope will be helpful for you in making feeding and mealtimes with your early eater. A little more enjoyable for both you and your baby, because the benefits of starting to have family meals even early on in the feeding process, those benefits are going to pay off long after your baby has mastered the art of learning, how to eat. So I like to start each of these mini training episodes that I do with a baby led weaning tip of the day. And here's today's tip baby led.

Katie Ferraro (2m 3s):

Weaning does not mean that your baby eats exactly the same foods that you eat at every single meal. I see that all the time, people will say things like, oh, baby led weaning is super easy. You just feed your baby, whatever you're eating. It's a little more nuanced than that. You guys like personally, I love eating tortilla chips and raw apples and red wine. And I'm going to continue to eat those foods. Even when I'm doing baby led weaning. And my baby can't have those foods, right? But hang tight because I'm going to be sharing with you the exact steps that you can take to eventually incorporate your baby into family mealtimes at the family table. Now, whatever that looks like, because I know for some of us, it's an actual table for some of us, it's a picnic table. It may be a picnic blanket, mealtimes look different to different families, but I'm going to run you through some steps for who, what, where, why when, and even the how of getting your baby engaged in family meals from his or her first bite.

Katie Ferraro (2m 52s):

So let's dive in. When should my baby start eating with the family? All right, let's start with the, where, where are we? Our baby? When we're talking about family meals, are you feeding them at the actual table? Well, if you're not, maybe you can, depending upon what your highchair situation is. I personally love a highchair that doesn't have a tray or take the tray off and pull the chair up to the table. You have to ensure that the baby is secured so they don't fall out of the chair. But the two high chairs that I use, the Strokke Trip Trap and the Nomi highchair, they're both designed by the same individual. He actually designed them so that they would be used without a tray. He did not design the tray for those chairs. You pull those chairs up to the table. You put the mat or the bowl on the table and the baby is eating from the table.

Katie Ferraro (3m 36s):

Now, if you don't have a table height table, so if you have a counter height or bar height table, this does not work because of the safety standards with highchair regulations, in order for highchairs to pass what they call the tip test. You basically can't build a high chair as tall as a counter height or bar height table. So in some cases you may need to purchase the tray to go with those highchairs. If you're using either the trip trap or the Nomi, there's a couple other ones out there. And sometimes parents get really mad, but like I just invested in this I chair and now I have to go pay 60 more dollars for a tray. What are you talking about? Keep in mind that you may be able to get by without the tray. And ideally it is nice to have the baby sitting at the table. Now a little bit more about the tray.

Katie Ferraro (4m 18s):

I would encourage you not to put baby's food directly on the table. If that's where you're eating or on the tray, that can be very frustrating for babies early on before they have their pincer grasp, they can't pick up small pieces of food. They going to use their whole hand to try to scoop and rake up foods. But if they're smashing it against the table or spreading it around the tray, they get really frustrated. You get frustrated, everybody wants to give up. And then you just start putting food on a spoon and shoving in your baby's mouth. And we don't want to see that because babies can and want to feed themselves. So when we feed out of a suction bowl or a mat, especially the kind with the flexible silicone barriers, the baby has a barrier against which they can scoop and rake foods up and out, pick them up and put them in their hands even early on in self-feeding.

Katie Ferraro (5m 2s):

So that's the wear of family meals. Let's talk about the, what, what foods is your baby eating or will your baby be eating? And is it the exact same food that you're eating? I shared that there's a lot of foods that adults eat that babies can't eat at six months of age and that's perfectly fine. Okay. The idea of baby led weaning is that babies can learn to eat modified versions of the same foods that the rest of the family eats. And if we're going to talk about like the ultimate goal is that by the time your baby turns one, we'd love to see your baby sitting at the table. Again, eating modified versions of the same foods, the rest of the family eats, but babies don't magically wake up on their first birthday, knowing how to do that. We have to practice. And that's what the weaning period is for.

Katie Ferraro (5m 42s):

So we start with soft strips of food that babies can pick up and sell feed. We don't add sugar, we don't add salt, no sticky foods. We also don't do any hard or crispy or crunchy foods. I have a free handout called 15 Foods, Never to Feed Your Baby that I'm going to link up on the show notes for this episode. If you go to BLWpodcast.com, you can find this episode. And then in there also share that 15 foods never to feed lists, just so you know what, not to the feeding, but I sometimes laugh with some of my colleagues in baby led weaning. We'll see pictures of families like, oh my baby's six months old and had lasagna today. Cause we had lasagna for dinner. Think about what's going on in lasagna. You guys, there's a lot of different foods that babies haven't tried yet.

Katie Ferraro (6m 25s):

There's a couple of different allergenic foods that babies haven't tried yet. There's lots of different textures. So there's wheat in there in the pasta and there's cheese, which is a dairy food and there's meat, which can be a challenging texture. And then there's tomatoes in there which can be acidic. And there's all these different things happening. It's way too challenging for a six month old baby to eat. We start with the individual single foods for the first few weeks and even months of baby led weaning. So I would do on its own and wait a few days to observe for any potential reactions because it's an allergenic food. And I would introduce meat and make sure baby can try different textures of meat. And I would do dairy separately and it would make sure it's low sodium dairy. And I would do tomatoes. You do all the individual pieces first.

Katie Ferraro (7m 5s):

And then later on when your baby moves to combination foods that's and you can start offering foods that are more similar to what your family is eating. So I think a great example of the, what here is. I live in San Diego. We eat fish tacos all the time. I'm not very creative in my family, but that's okay because I'm trying to eat together as much as possible and a little bit easier then done or actually done then said during quarantine, right? A lot of families, one of the silver linings of a global pandemic is that you end up eating more family meals together than you normally did. And if you look at data historically in the United States, about 50% of the household food dollar is spent on food prepared outside of the home. So historically it's been problematic in that.

Katie Ferraro (7m 45s):

Increasingly families in the United States are buying, purchasing and eating more and more and more foods outside of the home. The notion of the family, the meal has kind of been lost, but one of the silver linings of the pandemic is families are finding themselves because of no other choice, eating more meals together. So there is an upside to this and we, when we look at what foods the baby is eating that to fish taco night, if we're having fish tacos with the family and a baby is eating with us, we can do deconstructed fish tacos, right? I wouldn't give my baby a hard crunchy fried pieces of fish, but I might grill the fish and leave the breading off. Especially if it was salty. I don't do tortillas for baby these early on because they can gum up in the baby's mouth form.

Katie Ferraro (8m 26s):

A ball of starch become a choking hazard. So I would omit the tortilla, but I might serve the baby rice. I might serve them some of the salsa before I add salt, I would do some guacamole. I would do full fat sour cream, a piece of fish. There's a lot of options from that meal. It might not actually look like a fish taco for the baby, but I can make some slight modifications so that, well, namely, I don't have to make two separate meals. One for me and the big kids and one for the baby, we can modify the foods that we're already eating. So that's the what of the family meal piece. Yes. Your baby eventually will eat the same foods as you, but you don't have to have your baby eating every single food that you eat and vice versa. Some parents are like, so do I just like eat avocado on the day, the baby eats avocado.

Katie Ferraro (9m 8s):

Like if you don't normally just eat avocado than note, you know, avocado can be one of a number of things you're eating, but it might be the new food that your baby tries that day. All right. Let's talk about the, when component of the family meal thing here. When do babies eat? Like if your family sits down and eat three meals a day, does your baby starting three meals a day? Generally when we start solid foods at six to seven months of age, this is totally new and it represents a change in the schedule. And if you're on a schedule with your baby, congratulations, but schedules change and any change could be challenging. And I don't want parents to feel overwhelmed with the pressure on my gosh. We need to be eating three meals a day. Normally at six to seven months, I like to see babies eating with the family. One to two times a day at eight to nine months, you can bump that up to two to three times by 10 months of age, it's nice to see babies eating three meals a day with the family.

Katie Ferraro (9m 57s):

If that's how the rest of the family eats. Now, some parents hear that and I'm like, oh my baby's seven months. And we're already doing three meals. Hey, great. If that works for you, that's fine. I don't want parents who are really struggling to even sit down for 15 to 20 minutes once a day, to feel pressured to do three meals a day. But for parents are like my baby seven months of age. And we only feed her every three days. That is definitely not enough practice and enough exposure to different eating opportunities. We need that baby to be trying one to two times a day. So that's the when and then for how long a feeding session should generally last about 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes early on babies will fuss because they're not used to being in the highchair. The baby cries.

Katie Ferraro (10m 37s):

The mom rips him out of the high chair and he's like, oh my gosh, my baby hates being in the high chair. It takes a little bit of adjustment. If you are listening to this in your prior to six months of age, and you're thinking about things that you can possibly do to get your baby ready for baby led weaning. One thing is putting her baby in the high chair, getting them accustomed to it, give them the little baby led weaning spoon to play with, give them an open cup and put some breast milk or formula in it. Even before baby is ready to start solid foods. You can actually get the baby ready by getting them comfortable, sitting in the high chair. So that's the when or the how often piece. Let's talk about who, who is there at family mealtimes. Please remember that babies should never be left unattended during meal time. Now I know that sounds obvious, but there are a lot of parents out there who it's a lot of work raising a baby.

Katie Ferraro (11m 22s):

And when you get in a groove and your baby starts eating, some parents are like, oh, sweet mealtime. Here's the food. I'm going to sit down, chill out, get on my phone and take a break while you eat this food. But choking is a silent occurrence. If your baby chokes on food, you will not hear it. Gagging is audible, right? Cause air is getting through, but with choking because the airway is obstructed, you're not going to hear anything. You need to be directly observing your baby. So I know it's a full-time job, but you don't get a break during meal time. I want you sitting there with your baby. And to be honest, you should be taking a break for 15 to 20 minutes to enjoy a meal a few times a day. So try to get there down at eye-level with your baby enjoying meals with your babies for just 15 or 20 minutes, you eat whatever it is you are going to eat.

Katie Ferraro (12m 5s):

If it's something similar to what your baby's eating, great. If it's not, it doesn't really matter. Your baby is watching you eat. You want to be dramatic in how you bring food to your mouth, demonstrating how you chew and move food around in your mouth. Because you feel ridiculous doing it. But please remember that your baby is learning about how to eat. Not only from trying to do it himself, but also by watching you do it. So be sure to be eating with your baby if you can. And certainly never leave your baby unattended. If you're not eating the same foods, that's fine, but baby should not be eating by themselves. All right. So we've gone through the where the, what the, when or how often and the who component of family meals. Let's just talk lastly about why, why does it even matter if our babies are eating with us?

Katie Ferraro (12m 48s):

Well, there is no shortage of research that shows all of the positive associations between family meals and healthy eating. There are studies out there that show that families who eat together, especially with baby led weaning families. The baby is more likely to be eating the same foods as the family at age one than our babies who are traditionally spoon fed, right? Because with traditional spoon feeding, most babies only have about 10 or 15 foods under their belt. By the time they turn one. Well with baby led weaning, I teach the a hundred first foods approach. Your baby tries a hundred different foods before the time they turn one, okay, they're gonna have a much greater variety in diet diversity, meaning they're going to try the different textures and have had the allergenic foods.

Katie Ferraro (13m 29s):

And they're going to be eating high iron foods like meat and other animal foods. If those are foods, the rest of your family eats. If you want to grab my hundred first foods list, I give it to everybody on my free online workshop called baby led weaning for beginners. It's all about how to get your baby to eat 100 foods before turning one, without you having to spoon feed purees or buy pouches. So you can sign up for this week's workshop times and grab that full a hundred first foods list at the show notes page. For this episode, if you go to BLWpodcast.com/83, come join the workshop, learn a little bit more about baby led weaning, get the a hundred first foods list and start knocking off those foods for your baby at family meals.

Katie Ferraro (14m 9s):

Now there's other evidence that suggests that regular family meals, of course the quality of the foods that the baby eat tends to be better, but the benefits extend beyond nutrition. And I think that's important that there is research that shows that regular family meals not only prevents against unhealthy eating, it's actually associated with lower rates of obesity during childhood and adolescents, family meals are positively associated with things like increased fruit and vegetable consumption, lots of other nutrients promoting good eating habits and disease prevention, and then families who eat home cooked meals more often are more likely to consume smaller portions than if you were to eat outside of the home, fewer calories, less fat, less salt, less sugar. One of the statistics that I absolutely love is from the Rudd Center for food policy and obesity.

Katie Ferraro (14m 53s):

And they do a lot of work in the area of trying to educate and prevent against unhealthy marketing practices, especially surrounding foods and children. So basically the findings of 2017 data is that for kids age two to 11, they see on average 10 ads per day for food. And that might be on a tablet that might be on traditional TV. If you've ever watched any of those kids centered YouTubes, they're like always sponsored by unhealthy food companies. So basically 10 ads a day for food. And like, I hate to break it to you, but like the baby carrots, people are not the ones advertising on YouTube, right? This is not for helpful foods. And this is not helpful food messaging that kids are seeing. And even if you sat down with your kid three times a day at three different meals and you conveyed one health messaging at each meal, you're still only running at about 30% of the capacity as big food marketers are with regards to food messages, they're sending your kids.

Katie Ferraro (15m 42s):

And I don't tell you this to depress you. I mean, we can do what we can to prevent our kids from seeing unhealthy food advertisements, to a point, but use family meals as the antidote to that, where you sit down and you are sharing positive messages about food and conversation and eating a variety of foods and eating together, your kids are going to get plenty of messages from outside sources. But I love that we as parents do have control over family mealtimes and we can have that control and establish those patterns as early as six months of age, even before we don't start solids until six months, but bring your baby to the table and have him or her engaged in and sitting with your family. When you guys are eating so much of the foundation of establishing healthy relationship with food in the family starts at our babies.

Katie Ferraro (16m 26s):

First bites, you are going to have to eat with this person for the next 17 and a half years of his or her life. So I think it's a great idea to get in the habit of incorporating your baby at family meal times as early as possible. All right, there, you have it guys. The who, the what the, where the, why the when, and even the how of having our babies eat with us at family mealtimes. Everything I mentioned from today's episode is linked up in the show notes. BLWpodcast.com/83. Thank you so much for this awesome episode idea. This was actually an idea from a listener, a mom named Emily. She left the idea, asking a question about when the baby should start eating with the family inner review on Apple podcasts. So if you guys are enjoying the baby led weaning made easy podcast and you have a second, I would love a written review from you on Apple podcasts.

Katie Ferraro (17m 11s):

Leave me your episode ideas in there, please. I personally read every single review that you guys leave and I get my best episode ideas from you. So thanks again. See you next time.