The most common question we hear in the post-wean stage is, “but are you sure this is safe?” Most often, this question comes from parents whose children are settling into being fully oral, without tube support, in the stage where this new “eating life” looks really different than the life they were living on full tube feeds. For most parents, the unpredictability of oral eating can lead to some significant panic, and if we aren’t careful, sometimes that panic can cause parents to jump the gun to resume tube feeds unnecessarily.

Raising an anxious eater often invites well-meaning but unhelpful comments from others, like the suggestion that a weekend away will solve the problem. These remarks, though intended to help, can harm parents' mental and emotional well-being. Many parents feel trapped under a constant barrage of criticism, feeling unable to push back because they understand the comments come from a place of care. However, it's crucial for caregivers to set boundaries, not to change others' behavior but to protect their own well-being. After all, the only behavior you can control is your own.

There’s nothing more frustrating than doing the work to create an amazing meal, only to set it in front of your darling child and receive an immediate, “NO! I don’t want it!” And while there are lots of good reasons for kids to develop an anxious response to food (such as being a new eater, surprising textures, pressure from caregivers during meals, a history of aspiration, etc.), there are ways that loving and amazing parents accidentally foster picky eating. 

One of the most exhausting realities of parenthood is that the job is relatively nonstop! And while none of us wants to miss even one magical moment of childhood, the magic is always accompanied by challenges. Top of that list includes helping kids to learn how to respond to their worlds in proportional and appropriate ways – but that’s hard to do! Because kids learn how to behave, not based on what they are told to do, but based on the way that their grown-ups respond to them. 

Getting off of the tube is one thing, but staying off the tube feels like a completely different minefield. A lot of parents worry about whether they’ll have to re-tube the child they just weaned, and that fear is never more present than the times when your child stops eating the way you hope or expect for them to do after a wean. 

We believe that when a child stops eating (or begins to eat less), there is always a reason. Our job is to figure out what that is so that we can address the situation mindfully and responsively. 

There are some weans that just “click,” and your kiddo connects with eating and drinking as if some magic light switch flipped on all of a sudden! But that is not the reality for the vast majority of us, and even though most of us go in knowing that it’s not weaning isn’t a light-switch-flip, we all secretly (or not-so-secretly) hope for one. And then, when things just aren’t clicking in the way or at the pace we hoped for, and the fear of “what if this doesn’t work?” and “what if we have to reset?” kicks in, anxiety grows louder and desperation can really start to take over. 

So what can we, as parents, do when the wean just isn’t working the way we hoped it would? And every offer is just feeling more and more hopeless?