With my boys being two and four years old now, we are way past the weaning stage but I still remember those first weaning faces like they were yesterday! When we first started weaning Jacob, we started on purees but gradually moved to baby led weaning and we used many Organix products. I will admit, if I gave J a new food and he pulled a face and/or spat it out, I probably wouldn’t try him with it again and I think it turned him into a fussy eater!

A weaning survey carried out by Organix showed that over half of mums were put off encouraging their baby to try a new food after the first time because of faces they pulled. As a new mum I did feel quite discouraged when J wouldn’t try new foods introduced to him and it did become quite stressful as I thought he was never going to eat anything I gave him! The one food that was quite popular with J to begin with though was banana; I think possibly because it was soft, and he could mush it about in his hands which is always fun for a baby!

Organix has commissioned Clinical Psychotherapist and body language expert Vivien Sabel to shed more light to parents on the weaning faces that babies pull, and how to interpret and understand them rather than putting them off. Some of these weaning faces are in the image below:

I have to say that both boys pulled every one of these faces – though by the time it was Noah’s turn for weaning, I was a bit more clued up so I was confident in introducing and re-introducing new foods to him, and the weaning faces he pulled actually made me chuckle! I also treated N’s weaning journey differently to J’s – I introduced finger foods from the get go rather than purees, and offered a couple of different choices at a time; for example, something squashy and something a little harder, something sweet and something savoury… But, I didn’t mix flavours so that he could distinguish between them, so for example offering broccoli and apple separately rather than mixed together.

Here are some top tips from Vivien on understanding your baby’s expression:

• Your baby has an active curious mind and understanding their non-verbal cues and clues can support your baby and you through weaning and trying new foods.
• Look out for all of your baby’s non-verbal expressions – observe their expression and mirror it back to your baby as a way of saying you understand their communication.
• Remember babies do what babies see! They are like sponges and soak up everything you do. So when it comes to encouraging your baby to try new foods, your expression needs to be seen and needs to be encouraging – if you look like you’re enjoying the food, your baby is likely to copy you.
• The more time you spend observing your baby the more you’ll understand what they are communicating.

In order to help you on your way with your weaning journey, I’ve teamed up with Organix to offer one lucky winner a £20 bundle of their baby foods. Organix has created weaning foods with a variety of tastes, shapes and textures to encourage your baby’s curiosity about food.

For little ones at the start of their journey Organix offers a variety of simple and natural first tastes in baby cereals and fruit pots, to more challenging flavours and textures as your baby moves on. Their finger foods come in lots of different shapes and sizes to encourage your little one to pick them up and learn to feed themselves. All its foods come with the Organix No Junk Promise, a stamp of reassurance that they are made with the best organic ingredients, and contain no unnecessary additives so your little one gets great tasting food, without the junk.

All you need to do is enter via the Rafflecopter below – good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

More competitions at ThePrizeFinder

Terms & conditions
Open to UK residents 18 & over.
Entries must be received by 11.59 pm on 07/05/2016.
The winners will be drawn randomly via Rafflecopter/random.org when the giveaway has ended.
The winner has 28 days to respond to my email before another winner is drawn.
The winner details will be sent to the PR who will send your prize directly.

For more on the faces your baby pulls follow #realfoodface.