He WILL NOT self feed!

Hello all!

My son will be 13 months in a few days and no matter what my husband and I do, he refuses to eat anything unless we feed it to him on a spoon. He also seems to be struggling to swallow pieces of food and will only eat puréed foods. He starts to gag a little and cries when we try to give him tiny pieces of food mixed into his purée. When we try to just leave pieces of food on his tray to get him to feed himself he just cries and throws it in the floor.

I can’t stand to see him so upset but I feel that he might be behind at the stage in development.

What do you moms recommend we do to encourage him to finally pick up his food and eat it himself? Is he simply not ready to eat pieces of food yet? Do I need to just have a back bone and let him cry until he figures it out?

Help please! 😫