Mess is Best - Your 'Set Them Free' Success Plan

Mess is best! This is your new mantra for life if you have a baby of weaning age. But if getting ultra-messy is crucial for development, why do parents struggle to set their children free to explore without limits? The first answer parents typically provide is the fear of the post-meal clean-up operation. Still, the most significant barrier often stems from a lack of understanding regarding the benefits of messy weaning. Our ‘Set Them Free’ success plan will give you the confidence to wean messily without the stress. So, what does ‘good messy weaning’ involve and why do experts say mess really is best?

Playing with food

It goes against everything our parents told us, but playing with food is not just okay; it’s a fundamental part of weaning babies' development. Think of it as a rich scientific sensory experiment where they learn about textures and the changing state of food. It involves taste, touch, sight, smell, exposure to temperature, and a whole lot of motor development. Playing with food can take many guises. It might involve pushing food around the plate or building with it. Perhaps it’s painting the highchair tray or face with fingers dipped in yoghurts and purees. It could be simply squishing and squeezing foods in the hands to test their composition and structure. At this stage, it’s essential to consider any interaction with food as one of those vital exposures on the road to independent feeding.

What happens if I skip this stage?

Discouraging your little one from playing with their food can lead to an aversion to mess and a resistance to handling textures. This can lead to picky eating challenges and delays in oral motor development. Our multi-sensory teether, Dotty the Dinosaur was designed to address this issue and prepare little mouths and muscles for weaning. Her five unique features offer a full mouth muscle workout. You can read more about Dotty here and discover why Mother & Baby awarded her gold for the best teething product.

Paediatric occupational therapists and feeding therapists also note a lack of adventure and hesitancy to try new foods in babies who have been discouraged from playing with and exploring their food.

Don’t obsess only about the physical eating of foods in the early weeks and months of weaning. They’ll still be getting nutrition from breast milk or formula. Focus on mealtimes as a total sensory experience rather than only physical food consumption.

Eating with hands

This is closely linked to playing with food. Our hands house sensory receptors that help us understand and interpret texture, so it’s vital that our fingers, palms and whole hands get involved in early self-feeding. The messier, the better, so if your little one is smearing their face and hair with the food in their hands, they’re doing great. This tactile exploration provides essential feedback and information to be banked and recalled in future mealtime discovery sessions. These stored credits will help your little one distinguish different textures and help them learn how their mouth and swallow mechanism deals with them. They’ll construct an internal catalogue of gooey, sticky, lumpy, smooth, etc., that helps them recognise and classify these textures as familiar, allowing them to become safer independent eaters. There’s also a primitive response to messy eating with hands that plays right into self-feeding. It won’t take long before your little one realises that their messy hands are a source of food. If they don’t instinctively bring them to their mouths to taste, you can gently guide them or demonstrate yourself!

Key challenge to overcome

Prep is everything. You can’t and won’t want to stop the mess from happening. Where there’s mess, there is development. You can, however, do a lot to make the mess more manageable and develop your own coping strategies to embrace it. After all, that’s why we invented the Coverall Weaning Bib initially—to help catch all the spills and make the clean-up quicker and easier. If you know you can scoop everything up more easily at the end of a meal and wipe it down quickly, you’re more likely to encourage this critical learning opportunity.

A degree of acceptance is required. Try to focus on the end benefit rather than what you see as mess. That mess is building your child’s future, so view it as a valuable, free-of-charge opportunity to help them grow and develop.

Self-feeding

Life is busy - we get it. As parents, we’re often focused on getting through the list of daily routine tasks with the least amount of stress and resistance. Time is almost always a pressure, and multiple daily mealtimes and snack sessions can lead to groundhog day. Before you know it, you’re spoonfeeding at every sitting to keep on track. Now, weaning utensils should be introduced early, alongside finger feeding, and should absolutely be encouraged. But do bear in mind that your little one is still developing the motor strength and skills to hold that cutlery and direct it accurately towards their mouth. This will take time and patience, as well as practice and repetition. Start with Dippit - our award-winning 2-in-1 dipper and weaning spoon. Its world-first two-handed design taps into the fact that hinged elbow flexion develops before wrist control, making it easier for your little one to guide food independently to their mouth successfully. The honey drizzler end also picks up viscous foods easily - think ideal first foods like porridge, yoghurt and purees. You can read more here.

Self-feeding - with hands or weaning utensils - builds more vital skills like self-regulation, autonomy and confidence.

How can I help?

Don’t skip the hand-feeding stage, and don’t be concerned if your little one switches between using their hands and cutlery. Sometimes, they’ll just find it easier to pick something up with their hands, giving their coordination and motor skills a workout. That’s okay—remember, they’re getting a rich sensory experience, too, that’s expanding their mind and building their brain.

One of the biggest lessons for parents here is to resist the temptation to steal their child’s struggle. Let them use the spoon upside down. Let the same slippery food item slip through their fingers multiple times before they figure it out. They’re no longer just eating. They’re problem-solving and acquiring crucial life lessons that will support them later.

Sensory exploration (outside of mealtimes)

Playing with food and exposure to mess doesn’t have to be reserved for mealtimes only. Look for other opportunities to explore and discover when time is less pressured. Experiment with simple but powerful ways to normalise and embrace mess through sensory play and meal prep.

What can I do?

Try this simple and inexpensive ‘play with orange’ exercise at home. It’s amazing how something as simple as a simple fruit in all its forms can stimulate all the senses and evoke and encourage curiosity and discovery. Encourage water play to get them used to the sensation and behaviour of free-flowing liquids. This can be done outside of mealtimes and as part of introducing an open cup like the Sippit from 6 months. Even a simple bundle of cooked spaghetti (check the temperature first) on the highchair tray can help your little one experience texture and get their fine motor control firing on all cylinders.

More ‘Set Them Free’ success plan tips

• Keep it positive – use lots of encouragement and positive reinforcement during mealtimes. Commentate and use descriptive language to describe colours, shapes, sizes and texture. Avoid pulling faces at the mess or their self-feeding, and don’t use negative words.
• Be engaged – make time to be present at mealtimes. This is crucial for safety reasons but also because you are there to encourage, reward, and celebrate success, as well as to guide, teach, and demonstrate.
• Don’t clean up! – save the clean-up for the end of mealtimes. Constant fussing and face-wiping mid-meal or mouthful interrupts the flow and interferes with the sensory process. Full immersion yields powerful benefits. Let them get stuck in, and trust that the Bibado Coverall will make light work of the post-meal clean-up.