Wow, sounds like your little guy is having a tough week!

My 9 month old has never really been interested in being spoon-fed. For foods that usually need a spoon, like yogurt, I often spead it on a piece of bread and then cut the bread up into baby friendly pieces. Then he can feed himself by picking up the pieces. It is very messy, but he enjoys the independence and his accuracy is gradually improving.

When I am in a hurry and we don't have time for a big mess, he will sometimes let me "finger feed" him. I dip my finger in the food and he licks it off. But like you described, he usually closes his mouth. So I let him feed himself as much as possible and just know that there will be a mess. We are trying to use a baby-led approach to feeding so letting him feed himself is part of the experience.

Just another thought, could you let your baby try to spoon-feed himself?

I was at a comedy gig recently where the comedian was describing his baby refusing to eat unless the baby had control of the spoon. He observed that the baby didn't seem to mind food appearing in his mouth while he flailed wildly with his own spoon. so the procedure went one spoonful on face/floor/clothes, one spoonful in mouth, repeat until done then clean up a lot.

This reminded me of doing something similar feeding my baby brother, he was so occupied with playing with his own spoon he didn't really notice the extra food appearing as if by magic.

My daughter has time when she is like this. She is now a little older. I let her feed herself with the spoon or fork (she use to make a huge mess but is pretty good these days) or get her to pick up the spoon and then I hold it to guide it in. As her older brother (nearly four) loves someone else to help him eat his dinner I love her independence.

If you are worried about whether they are eating enough or a if it is variety keep a list for several days of what they have had to eat. You might be pleasantly surprised. I was.

Read about "baby-led weaning" and your mind will be at ease. THey don't have to eat stuff off spoons. At this age, baby should still be getting most nutrition from breastmilk or formula anyways. It's more an exploratory age for solid foods.

My 8.5 month old had a sort of similar phase. At daycare he would eat anything they put in front of him; at home he'd be angry -- it seemed like he wanted to eat just the way we were, with bigger bites and a fork, instead of the little bits we were putting in front of him. Or he wanted to use the spoon himself and would always grab it when we tried to feed him with it. We figured he did better at daycare because there were other babies doing the same thing, and he wanted to imitate them. I don't know if this is your guy's problem, but I suspect so, since you tagged it "independence".

To put you at ease, it WAS just a phase. Now he eats like a champ. One thing I did that may have helped was to start feeding him pretty much the same thing I was eating. For example, he stopped wanting me to cut up a banana for him -- he will only eat the banana if I give him a peeled banana. We have to be super watchful to make sure he doesn't choke (he did a couple times, but coughed it up quickly). He will also eat with a spoon now but I just use the puree as a supplement, not the "main course".

I have 12 month old twin boys, and my one son is very difficult to feed as he does the same thing as your little guy. His favorite thing to do is grab the spoon from my hand and throw it. Whenever he's being difficult, I find singing songs or tickling him to make him laugh, gets him distracted enough to open his mouth so I can get some food in. He's more interested in feeding himself than having me feed him, but I always worry that he's not eating enough also, so I do whatever it takes to distract him enough to open his mouth. I hope it's just a phase, but its been going on with him for a few months while his brother always has his mouth wide open for anything that resembles food.

Someone else suggested to me to let him hold an extra spoon to keep his hands occupied so I could feed him, but this didn't always work for me as he would put that spoon in his mouth instead of my spoon with the food on it! But sometimes, if I let him hold my spoon and I helped him place that spoon in his mouth, he would be so proud of himself that he would eat no problem.

Hopefully you'll find a little trick that works for you! When all else fails for me, I pull out my laptop and play kids music videos on youtube and again he's distracted and will open for me.

Good luck!! And I hope it's just a phase!!

Crumpets are also good for spreading food on, so they can finger feed themselves.