Finger Food Woes

My little man is going through a patch of finger food regression. He had always done great with food and then BAM.... bump in the road. He will still eat finger food, but only if fed to him. I am completely flabbergasted because he will feed himself cheerios, but anything else he picks up and then immediately drop with a disgusted look on his face. After some researching (thank GOD for the internet) I found out that this is extremely common and also got some great advice:

• Give him finger foods for breakfast. This is the meal when babies are the hungriest and may be more receptive to finger foods.I generally did oatmeal or something of the sort.

• Only give the cheerios after they've eaten their finger foods. I was putting them on his high chair to pacify him while I prepared his meals.

• Put his highchair up to the table and eat with him. Our high chair was by the table, but not directly facing it and his meal times aren't at times when I'm usually hungry. Eating with him makes a difference, even if I just nibble.

• Don't stare at him when he eats and don't make meal times a big deal. It sounds crazy now that I think about it, but when I gave him finger foods before I would pull up a chair and sit right in front of him while he ate. WHY?! I have no idea. I guess out of habit from when I fed him cereals or purees. When he started regressing, I would stress about it and stare at him thinking  "Is he going to eat or not? "

• He isn't going to let himself starve! He will eat if he's hungry enough. This has been a big stress reliever to mentally remind myself of this. He's not going to starve to death, he's not going to starve to death!

Reading these tips it's like DUR, who wouldn't automatically do those things, but sometimes with parenting you are thinking about so many things and trying so hard to get the big things right that the small things slip your mind. We're on day 2 of our finger food rehab. Yesterday he immediately did great and I was so surprised. This morning at breakfast time I could tell he was really hungry (think begging little bird), but he would not have anything to do with finger foods. I so badly wanted to cave and get him some cereal or yogurt, but I had to remind myself that I wasn't doing Corbe.n any good and it wouldn't help us in the long term. That's the thing about parenting, you can't do what is easiest in that moment, you have to think about your long term goal. Begin as you mean to go. I got him out of his high chair and he played for another 45 minutes and then we tried again. This time he eagerly ate his food! Victory! I won't say that he ate a ton, but it's a step in the right direction and with patience I know we'll get back to where we were before. Parenting is complicated that's for sure!