Skilled and responsive caregivers incorporate their background knowledge of children’s sensory capabilities into planning developmentally appropriate activities, the environment, as we as their own expectations and interactions with babies.

Expose babies to self-feeding. Mean ages for self-feeding fine motor skills showed children reaching for a spoon when hungry (5 to 6 months), using fingers to rake food toward self (8 to 11 months) and using fingers to self-feed soft foods (13 to 16 months). Findings suggest that infants develop at their own rates and a wide age range for achieving these behaviours should be considered for infant feeding practices.