How small do you need to dice their food?

DS has two lower teeth. DS just is getting her first bottom tooth. They both like finger foods.

My question is how small do I need to dice things? I know that, for example, grapes need to be cut up, but how small is small enough but still big enough for little awkward fingers to pick up?

 

I think it depends a little on the texture, but for most things, I aimed for about the size of a cheerio. Or, I'd slice a hot dog and then cut the slice into quarters - about that size...

 

Yup, cheerio size is a good size to aim for. I try to imagine how big their esophagus is and nothing is ever bigger than that. And teeth don't really matter...babies are excellent at "gumming" food

 

Yeah, the size of a puff or cheerio....some of the softer things like bread, I will do a little bigger (after I have done smaller bits) Olivia tends to choke all the time, so I tend to go smaller with her eventhough she would rather bigger bites.

 

Mine are 9 months, can they handle that size? I am worried they would choke and then I really would not know what to do. What kind of finger food can we do at this age? We have gone through a lot of the fruits, smashing them up, but my LOs like to try new things and I could use some new ideas.

 

Thanks! A cheerios is a great reference point. I have been cutting stuff smaller than it needs to be so this is good to know.

newmom: My guys like to eat pretty much everything--fruit, cheerios, rice chex, corn, crackers, etc. They are 9 months adjusted.

 

Absolutely At that age mine were eating puffs, bananas quartered, green beans cut in 1/2, peas, corn, cooked carrots quartered, tiny bits of pears. Basically anything they've eaten baby food you can go ahead and give them tiny pieces of to eat

 

The best you can do is try and see how they do. I tried some diced foods a few weeks ago, and our LO's didn't know what to do with them and starting choking. They can handle the puffs, which dissolve, but that is about it. I plan to try again in a couple more weeks. Kids are ready at different times, so do what works for you. We didn't start solids at all until 6 months, so that may be part of it.

 

If it comes back out, it's probably too big...

Mine is ok with quartered grapes, and other foods about the same size. She also does really well with bite size pieces of chicken (make sure it's tender).

 

Well, I will give it a whirl. You know I didn't even think about bite size food. For some reason I was thinking it would be done closer to a year or so. Sometimes it is so hard to keep up with this stuff as to what they should be doing at what age.

 

We started off very small. Like maybe shredded cheese or carrots type small. Worked up from there. "Cheerio" size is what we aim for, too, unless it's very soft - like dices of a baked sweet potato or something similar.

 

I aimed for small, Cheerio size is a good way to think of it. If they could handle the Gerber puffs, I moved up to cheerios. It was fair game after that!

As to what they can have at 9 months... My boys were on all table food by that point-spaghetti, meatballs, fruits, chicken, etc. It's easy for me to remember because we were in Italy, surrounded by pasta and fruit! :laughing: Everyone loved giving them food! Just make sure it's cut up really small-quartered is good. If I saw them struggling-Annabella did this some times-then I knew it was too big and would make the pieces smaller if need be.

Enjoy the newest stage!

Oh-and I found if they had trouble picking it up, I would do it for them a few times, and then they quickly caught on.

 

If you look at the babyled weaning websites (I'm not doing this, but used some of the ideas for finger foods) they also suggest giveing babies something big enough that they can hold on to and gnaw on. So a broccoli florette where the baby can hold the stem and gnaw on the top and stuff like that. When I do chunks, they are probably a bit bigger than a cheerio (mine are only 8 months so their pincer grasp isn't great yet), but they spit out anything too big.

 

Like everyone has said, start off giving small pieces (Cheerio-sized is a good reference point) and go from there. Shredded cheese is a big hit with my girls. I think they started finger foods at around 9 months old and took to it immediately. Some babies might need some time to adjust to it. They just need to work on their pincer grasp, which they should have down pat sometime between 7-11 months old. Have fun with finger foods! I personally love this stage because they can eat pretty much anything and there's no need to puree it. Some of the finger foods my girls enjoy:

- meatloaf or meatballs cut up into appropriate sizes
- canned or fresh fish (they've had tuna, salmon and rainbow trout) flaked into appropriate sizes
- cut up chicken or beef
- scrambled egg yolks
- baked squash mashed and rolled into little bite-sized balls
- mac and cheese or plain pasta