I remember back when J was starting to feed himself, we gave him cutlery from quite early on, as we have with N; I think from around 9 months old J had a spoon but didn’t really do much with it other than make a mess! Though I do believe it’s all about the fun with food for them at that age anyway. From one year onward though is when I wanted the boys to really try and use their own cutlery. N is much the same as J was, and J didn’t start using cutlery properly until gone 2 years old (and at age 3 has only just started using his knife); he would mainly use his hands because he couldn’t get the hang of the cutlery. Obviously because children’s cutlery is usually designed to just be a miniature version of adult cutlery, right?

That is where Catherine Dodd saw a gap in the market and Doddl cutlery was born in conjunction with Catherine’s sister, Rosie. Doddl comprises of a spoon, fork & knife set and is designed so that the child instinctively uses their pincer grip and therefore the cutlery is much easier to control for children aged as young as 12 months old. The unique shorter design of Doddl also promotes hand-eye coordination and helps achieve key milestones and encourages other hand skills and finger movements needed for activities such as writing & drawing. We have recently been testing out a prototype of a Doddl fork & spoon.

When I opened the package, I immediately thought how much easier these would be for N to use! They are a great size, not too heavy, yet really sturdy. As you can see, they also have indents on the side which makes it even easier for N to hold them. He has a really good pincer grip anyway but using these he has been developing it even more.

It has been so much easier for him to learn picking up his food and he is using cutlery much more than his hands, more than he was before with the standard cutlery the same as J uses. In fact, J even wanted to try it out and took to feeding N his breakfast!

I really love the unique design of the Doddl cutlery, and the little ‘d’ completes that young funky feel to the set. I can’t fault Doddl at all, it is a completely unique product that could really help children learn to use cutlery from a younger age.

There is currently a Kickstarter campaign where you can find out a lot more about Doddl, and Catherine & Rosie are almost at their goal of £10,000 with 4 days to go!

Disclosure
We were sent a prototype of this cutlery free of charge to review. All thoughts and opinions are honest & our own.