Children's Cutlery

How do I introduce the doddl children's cutlery?

Like any new skill, chopping with a knife takes time to learn. However, thankfully the doddl knife is perfectly safe for your child to use and designed to make it as easy as possible. It sits in your child’s palm, enabling a strong palm grip, and allows your little one to use the strength in their hand to push down through food. Practice makes perfect, so spend some time encouraging your child to chop easy foods (like bananas, for example) or even play dough outside of mealtimes first (try rolling out little pretend carrots to chop!) so they understand the motion required.

Once they see how it works and that they can chop on their own, they’ll be more enthused to carry on learning. Then start to introduce it at mealtimes alongside their other utensils. You may well need to keep chopping up some of their food initially if they’re a little tricky, but as they see you using your knife at mealtime and they start to get the hang of it they’ll be no stopping them!

Most children should be ready to start using a knife from 18 months to 2 years (depending on their past journey/experience with using cutlery).

How does the doddl knife cut food but not skin?

It’s all about the clever serrated blade. It has been thoroughly researched and tested to ensure it is designed to be effective for cutting food, but not skin. We can’t say too much, because it’s so special, but with the clever blade design and the power from your child’s palm you’ll find your child can safely chop through any type of food.

How do I introduce the doddl children’s fork?

Once your child has practiced with the spoon, you can introduce the fork and encourage them to hold one in each hand (even if they are only using one). Similarly to the spoon you can load it first and encourage them to feed themselves, and then you can guide their hand to stab the food so they understand the movement involved. And remember, doddl is designed to make it easy for them to move the food from plate to mouth, so you should start to see their control improve over time.

How do I know when my baby is ready to use cutlery?

Babies are usually keen to get involved with self-feeding from around 6 months. How they show this will be different depending on your preferred weaning journey.

For spoon fed babies, they will often show interest by trying to grab the spoon during mealtimes. For babies that are following baby led weaning you can measure their interest when they start to pick up the food and put it to their mouths. Then when you place appropriate cutlery down with their meal they’ll often pick it up bang it on the table or use their mouth to explore both ends of the cutlery. doddl baby cutlery is designed to make it’s safe for them to explore cutlery at this age (there are no long handles for them to gag on!) and both spoon and fork ends are very smooth and rounded.