When I was pregnant with my first I had strong opinions about baby led weaning. It seemed obviously superior in every way. Then I had an actual baby and discovered that opinions about parenting formed before you have children are reliably the most confidently wrong. The honest answer is that both approaches work and most families end up doing a combination. Baby led weaning means offering soft solid foods from around 6 months that baby can pick up and eat themselves, skipping the puree stage entirely. The advantages are real: babies learn to self-regulate intake from the start, are exposed to real food textures and flavours early, develop fine motor skills through self-feeding, and family mealtimes are simpler because everyone eats the same thing in modified form. The disadvantages are also real: it is messier, some foods that are nutritionally important are hard to offer in finger food form at first, it can be harder to ensure adequate iron intake in the early weeks, and the gagging that is normal and protective can be very alarming for parents. Traditional purees allow you to pack in nutrition efficiently, reduce the gagging anxiety, and are sometimes more practical for childcare settings. The disadvantages are that transitioning to textured foods later can be more challenging for some babies, and the spoon-feeding dynamic does not teach self-regulation in the same way. The combination approach, often called baby led weaning with purees or responsive feeding, involves offering both. Some foods as finger foods, some as spoonable textures. Most pediatric feeding specialists consider this the most practical and flexible approach for most families.