hi - welcome to BW.
with my youngest dd we had all kinds of feeding issues and ended up with a speech pathologist doing home visits to observe her bottle feeds and gave me tips for that, then she came when we started solids and guided me through our trials with that (since very early on we have had lots of oral aversion issues, swallowing problems and then with solids texture and gagging issues etc)
he will not and has never attempted to lift food and put it in his own mouth using his fingers let alone a spoon. he has never been one for putting anything except his thumb into his mouth no toys or anything.
when we began solids olivia was not a child who put anything in her mouth and we started with just the aim of getting her to allow us to put a spoon in her mouth - took a few days and then she hit her 6 mo growth spurt which accelerated things (hunger rules!), then we had to get her to eat solids. the SP told us to give her a spoon to play with and explore, make meals relaxed, use a baby toothbrush on her gums to get her used to things in her mouth and give her the chance to get used to it...
i think all of this helped us avoid getting where you are today with a 17 mo old who does not put things in his mouth. my point is that you might want to get an evaluation/assistance from a SP. it is probably no big deal but they can give you pointers on how to help him progress. wheni called to check in at 7 1/2 mo old because olivia had no instinct to put finger foods in her mouth (she never even tried to swipe it at her mouth and miss...) they asked if she put anything in her mouth at all as babies her age were gumming/mouthing everything... i explained that it was rare but she had just started to put a few things in occssionally - that relaxed them- so i think it is a red flag that he did not go through a "mouthing" stage either - but in this case i woudl guess the thumb is a good thing as he is comfortable with that.
Lilah's mommy is a Sp and there is a thread in the toddler section called "ask the speech pathologist" - perhaps you could ask there or PM her and see if she knows about food issues and such as i understand this falls under SPs work
http://www.babywhisperer.com/forum/ask-the-speech-language-pathologist-vt41829.html
