My Big Girl

As a preschool teacher, I came into motherhood with certain prejudices. I feel that independence is an important goal, one that I will work hard to help my child achieve as early as possible. I know not every parent feels that way, since I have actually had children come into my class at 18 months having never (no, not ever) fed themselves. Or been told no. But that's an aside. Both from the way I was raised, and from everything I've learned through the Montessori training, young children WANT to be independent, they want to try to do things themselves. If they can't quite do it, that's ok, I'm here to help, but my experience has been that most children (especially under 3) really love to try to accomplish something "myself." The kid in my class who FINALLY puts his own shoes on is so very proud that he did it. One of my kids' constant refrains is "I didi!" (I did it!) The motto in our class is "Help me to help myself." Coming from that angle, I sometimes have to put up with a little extra mess or plan a little extra time to allow Emmeline to really try to help herself. Since she's not quite to the point of say, dressing herself yet, the main time we get to practice these skills is meals. We started with the open cup back when she started solid foods. I would say by about 7, maybe 8, months, she had that down. She now drinks out of a big girl cup, the tupperware bell cups just like I had when I was little! Em has always done pretty well with a fork, provided I load it up for her. But I was stuck on spoons. I am ashamed to admit that I was still feeding her yogurt, applesauce, and oatmeal, because I was absolutely not prepared for the mess that I was sure would ensue if I let her go with a spoon. Yesterday I made her some baby muesli, and as I stirred it I realized it was pretty thick. I thought, hey, she's 11 months old now, surely I can give this spoon thing a try...and we were at school, so someone else would have to clean up the mess, right?! She did so beautifully, she ate the whole bowl, and would hand me the spoon to reload after every bite. By the end of the bowl, she was trying to scoop it up herself. Last night at dinner, I decided to try letting her feed herself the sausage with the fork. Previously, if I had ten minutes to sit and help, I would load up the fork, but most nights, I left a fork on the table and went on my merry way, happy to have her preoccupied with dinner while I did the dishes or got Shawn's and my dinner ready. Well, not only did she use the fork for every bite, including peas, but she tried valiantly to poke the sausage with the fork. It never left her hand the whole meal. I'm really proud of her! She's just getting older and bigger in front of me.