She’s 21 months old. She won’t use utensils! When she was a little baby she used to try and help feed herself with the spoon. We’d hand her the loaded up spoon and she’d put it in her mouth. But that phase only lasted a month or so. Now she eats everything with her hands. My husband feeds her applesauce most mornings with breakfast. He feeds her with the spoon. He allows her to try but she has a meltdown when he offers bc she doesn’t want to do it herself.

We will serve her like pasta with dinner or something and give her a bite off of her fork then leave the fork beside her to eat dinner so it’s available for her to use, but she won’t touch the fork once we stop helping since she knows her hands work lol

Or sometimes I’ll load up a fork with rice or whatever on it, and she will grab the fork and pull the food off the fork with her hands and eat it from her hands instead 😅 then throw it to the side and finish her dinner with her hands

I’ve put a little spoonful of frosting in a spoon for her to eat after lunch, and she picked the spoon up right away and held it to lick it off. So she can get it to her mouth for sure (I knew she could), I just don’t think she knows how to load her food up in it exactly, plus sees her hands work just as well.

She’s always been nervous to try new things, like she’s afraid to not be able to do something right so she’s always hesitant to try new things, so I know that’s what’s happening here. A lot of encouragement as she tries seems to help her but it doesn’t seem to help her here. I’ve tried encouraging her and also tried to “not watch” and not make it a big deal so she doesn’t feel like I’m monitoring her trying something new

We try to not make the utensil thing a big deal since I don’t want her to associate it with a bad thing since she has a meltdown when we ask her to use it, but I also feel like the longer we wait to address the problem the harder it’s gonna be to have her learn to use it

Any advice would be helpful! Thanks!