My daughter is now 10 months old and my main challenge these days is finding effective ways to get food into her mouth.

Anyone who has fed a baby knows that it can be hella challenging. My daughter often gets incredibly stubborn when it comes to eating (or rather, not eating) her food.

Sometimes she steals the spoon I’m feeding her with and doesn’t let go.

Sometimes she shuts her mouth and refuses to eat anything.

Or sometimes she just wants to eat baby crackers and nothing else.

I finally discovered a couple of tricks to get her to actually eat her food when she gets into her stubborn mode. When “Airplane” doesn’t work, try out these two baby feeding hacks on your kid. Email me to let me know if they work!

Trojan Horse Method

The Greeks invaded Troy by tricking the Trojans into bringing in a wooden horse statue within their walls secretly loaded with a crack team of Greek soldiers.

You can do a similar trick with your baby.

Your baby will have some favorite food. My kid loves bread, bananas, and baby crackers. So the first step is to find that thing that your baby loves to eat.

The Trojan Horse method is simple: put some of the preferred food on the baby’s tray, then when baby picks it up to eat it you can spoon-feed her the main course as she is opening her mouth. It’s a bit deceptive, but from what I can tell, my baby never really minds at all.

A variation on this is to put a bit of the preferred food on the spoon with the stuff you actually want to feed her. Your baby will more likely open her mouth to get at her favorite food, even if she has to eat some of the gruel you cooked up in the kitchen along with it.

Master Distractor Method

If your baby is fussy with eating her meal, then get her to play with something while she is eating.

Sometimes when my baby is fussy, I give her a spoon to play with.

Sometimes I give her some finger food to mess around with.

While she is distracted by playing, she readily opens her mouth to accept food. It’s total magic!

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These tricks work particularly well at the end of a meal when my daughter is getting full.

Try these two methods out on your fussy-eating baby, and let me know if you find out any of your own tricks! I always can use some more tips on feeding!