Is Eating An Instinct?

Daddy asked me me a question the other day. He said, "Why do humans, who are far more superior than many other animals, have to learn how to eat?"

He was actually reffering to our little son, Ace.

While Ace loves to eat, he doesnt seem to know how to pick things up and put them into his mouth... quite the contrary, he would pick things up and throw them away since throwing things away is his favourite past time...

You see, Ace is at the age where he has already mastered the skill of picking things up using two of his fingers. They call this the pincer grasp.. and babies with pincer grasps should be able to feed themselves cos Yi Xiang, my fren's son who is 7 months older than Ace has been picking things up and putting them into his mouth since he can crawl!

This is why Daddy wondered why Ace needed to be taught how to eat since little puppies or fishes would just eat on their own...

My mum tried this experiment where he put a small healthy times biscuit on a plate in front of Ace. He stared at the biscuit for a long long time and wanted very much to eat it. But he didn't think of using his hands to pick it up and eat it. He would just stare and stare and stare at the biscuit.

In the end, he put his mouth forward to the plate and used is mouth to pick and swallow the biscuit just like a little puppy!

However, if you give him a long teething biscuit, he would be able to hold on to it and bite it...

Well, I have tried to train him to pick up and eat small things like biscuits and VP but he seems to think it is a better idea to:

- pick up and throw it behind him..
- stare at it, stare at you, stare at it, stare at you.. until you pick and give him

Wahahaha...

New ideas to share on how to train him to pick and eat his own food, anyone?