No Food Fights

Lovely is changing fast. She no longer just uses toys to hold, bang, suck or throw. They are tools to her now. She uses her play dishes to cook in her kitchen. She picks up a comb and combs her hair with it. She grabs utensils away from us and tries to get at the food herself. People have always given me a hard time because I won’t let my babies feed themselves. They need to “practice”, they say. Yes they do, when they are ready to learn then they need to practice. Before that it’s just a useless mess that I have to clean up, teaching bad habits and dragging out the learning process unnecesarily.

People ask me how I taught my kids to read. They teach themselves when they’re ready. How do you know when they are ready? When they figure out that written words are everywhere around them and they want to know what they say. How do you know when a baby is ready to start feeding herself? When she grabs her own plate at dinner time and brings it to you to put food on it. When she starts grabbing the spoon out of your hand and feeding herself with it. It can’t be any clearer than that!

Speaking of waiting until kids are ready to accomplish things, I’ve been having a debate in my head about potty training ever since Lovely was born. I wasn’t into unschooling back when my other two were little. When they turned two, I potty trained them whether they liked it or not. It took a few months but they were both potty trained by 2 1/2 . I really want to do the same thing with Lovely but at the same time I want to sit back and watch her potty train herself. What part of me is going to win this battle? The caring, patient Mother who wants her kids to grow up learning to make their own decisions, or the controlling, manipulative Mother who wants to save hundreds of dollars on diapers? Tune in to find out.