A growing number of parents are skipping spoon-feeding their babies and trying “baby-led weaning” instead. Jenny Best was determined that her firstborn son would have a positive relationship with food from his very first bite. Years earlier, as a professional ballerina, she had struggled with disordered eating, and she wanted her son to think of food as fun.
But no matter what she did, the baby seemed to hate eating. “I made the homemade purées , and I got the expensive little baby blender, and I tried to concoct these things from scratch, and then, from Day 1, he didn’t like it,” Best said, wincing at the 8-year-old memory. “He was crying and arching his back, and turning his head, and particularly did not like me coming at him, at his face, with a spoon.
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