Here's How Toddlers Learn to Use a Spoon
January 5, 2021
Do you want to help your toddler niece or nephew learn to feed themselves with a spoon? It’s all in the wrist, Auntie.
A 10-month-long research experiment conducted in Japanese daycare centers found that toddlers were more likely to move their spoons towards their food immediately after the caregiver had changed the position of the plates or the food on them in order to give the toddler the opportunity to try to feed themselves.
The group of international researchers also found that the amount of time that toddlers spent looking at the caregiver's hands was significantly longer than the time spent looking at their face. Moreover, toddlers were 8 times more likely to look at the caregiver's hands than perform any other action when the caregiver was moving items around on the table.
However, toddlers were more likely to look at their caregiver’s face in order to check whether or not they were watching their behavior after the toddler had fed themselves with the spoon or we just playing with their spoon.
So, if you want to help a toddler niece or nephew learn to eat with a spoon, use your hands. And when they gaze at your face, smile encouragingly. Before you know it, your little niece or nephew will be feeding themselves!
This research was coordinated by an international research collaboration led by Kobe University's Professor NONAKA Tetsushi (Graduate School of Human Development and Environment) and the University of Minnesota's Professor Thomas A. Stoffregen investigated the interactions between toddlers learning to use a spoon and their caregivers during mealtimes at a daycare center in Japan. The research findings were published in Developmental Psychobiology on December 11, 2020.
Edited for length