#MealTimeMilestones with doddl // AD

*Paid partnership with doddl

At nearly two and a half years old, Freddie, our youngest son, is becoming increasingly independent. He wants to try and do things for himself, often watching his older brother around the house and trying to replicate the things he does. One of the things we’ve been trying to master during lockdown is Freddie’s use of cutlery. Recently doddl got in touch and asked us if Freddie wanted to try out their doddl cutlery set. The cutlery set is designed especially for toddlers and promotes independent eating at mealtimes.

Freddie is a dab hand at using a ‘poon’ as he calls it. He eats a yogurt daily straight from the pot with a spoon and has mastered this particular skill quite early on. Something we haven’t yet mastered is using cutlery with every meal so when I heard about doddl’s #MealTimeMilestones checklist I knew it would be a great challenge to tackle together.

The #MealTimeMilestones checklist

The #MealTimeMilestones checklist lists 10 challenges for little ones to accomplish when using cutlery. It introduces single use of the the fork, the spoon and a knife and then asks little ones to combine these skills and use two pieces of cutlery together to help feed themselves.

Enter the fork

Freddie is able to complete challenges 1 to 3 well. He is able to hold his spoon and scoop food from his bowl or plate and successfully place the spoon into his mouth to get the food. He can hold his fork well but usually out of laziness, he would rather use his fingers. This is something we’re working with him on and over the last month or so, he’s been regularly using a fork to eat his dinner.

Freddie has been able to skewer food from his plate, usually vegetables, pasta and sausages, successfully and has been really pleased with himself.

Spoon / Liquid Showdown

As a master of stealing my cereal in the morning, Freddie can scoop milk and cereal out of a bowl and demolish it. We regularly get liquid spillages but he is really improving with bringing the spoon to his mouth without dropping much liquid.

Enter the knife

Using a knife was a new concept to Freddie until recently and when we gave him the knife with his dinner, he was intrigued. We showed him how to hold the knife and how to cut the broccoli with it and he tried really hard to cut it up himself. He really enjoyed trying to cut things in half, especially scramble egg which he concentrated really hard on.

Combos

We quickly moved onto the next set of challenges as he tried to push the scramble egg onto his spoon using he knife. This surprised us as we didn’t think he would know what to do. Just goes to show how much he does pay attention at mealtimes and watches us and his older brother using our own cutlery.

Fork ‘n’ dip

Freddie is already quite good at this one and regularly dips his food into ketchup where it allows. He’s also rather fond of cranberry sauce on his roast dinner and practices this fork ‘n’ dip technique regularly.

On the other hand

We have noticed he doesn’t have a particular preference for fork holding as yet. He’s able to skewer food using the fork with both hands. He holds his crayons and pencils in his right hand when colouring so I’m assuming he’ll be right handed in the future.

When it comes to using two piece of cutlery at the same time, we definitely need more practice but he’s trying. It will be a while until we’re ticking off the last challenge ‘The Last Frontier’ as he’s not yet able to use the fork and knife well together without losing patience but he’s practising at every meal time.

We’ll continue to keep encouraging him to practice his cutlery skills at every meal time and I’m sure it won’t be too long until he’s ticked off all the challenges on the #MealTimeMIlestones checklist.

If you want to check out the doddl #MealTimeMilestones checklist, head over to their website and download a copy for your toddler to complete. Good luck!