Any time your kid gets sick, it’s hard. Especially if they’re weaning or post-wean. Read our blog for some helpful tips on how to approach your non-eating, sick kiddo, and what to watch for to make sure they are safe and comfortable.
When Can We Stop DOR?
Bottles are Best: How Infants Re-Learn to Suck-Swallow after Tube Feeds
Most full-term infants are born with innate reflexes to survive outside of the womb. The three most important reflexes for early feeding are the rooting reflex to locate the source of nourishment, the suck-swallow reflex to transfer breastmilk or formula, and the gag reflex to protect their airway. Although these automatic, reflexive patterns support the infant’s survival early on in life, they begin to integrate into volitional motor patterns around 3 months old.
Changing Up How you Offer Preferred Foods
When you and your child are feeling like you are in a rut on how to offer foods, it can be difficult to pull yourself up and branch out. But, as caregivers, we can make changes to already accepted foods to help encourage kids to try new foods and encourage variety (remember, within the Division of Responsibility, ‘what to eat of what is offered’ and ‘how much’ are the child’s jobs, so our job is only to help offer foods in a way that empowers them to expand on their job when they’re ready). Here are some tips to do just that
Expanding Your Child’s Food Variety
At some point, all parents (especially toddler parents) ask themselves, ‘When is my child going to eat more than 3 foods?’ and then follow up with, “and why do all three of those foods have to be processed carbs?” So whether your child is actually a toddler or just a toddler in the terms of “eating age,” it’s important to understand what to expect as your child begins to expand the variety of foods they eat.
The Transition from Tube Feedings to Oral Diet is a Marathon, Not a Sprint!
Division of Responsibility: Childhood through Adolescence
One of my favorite Ellyn Satter quotes is “when parents do their jobs with feeding, children do their jobs with eating”. It is certainly apparent that infants and toddlers need their parents to play an active role in helping them to form happy relationships with food. But it’s important to remember that older children (even adolescents) still need their parental involvement.
Division of Responsibility: Toddler Feeding
The most predictable thing about toddler eating is that it is unpredictable. Variations in appetite will occur and while there will be days when your toddler only wants to lick, taste, or nibble, there will be other days when the volume of food consumed is unfathomable. Trust that your toddler knows how much to consume at each eating opportunity.
Division of Responsibility: Infant Feeding
Growing Independent Eaters embraces and utilizes the feeding principles developed by Ellyn Satter. We use them because these principles have been validated through research to improve mealtime experiences in the long-term. And that’s what we want for your child: a life-long, happy, trusting, healthy relationship with food. And that kind of long-term success starts by implementing some really important principles, starting in infancy.
Two Types of Pressured Eating – and Why We Should Avoid Them
Growth Expectations: When to Expect Weight Gain Post-Tube-Wean
Weight gain, or the lack thereof, is often the reason that children are put on feeding tubes. And though parents learn to accept a small bit of loss during the weaning process, often the question remains as to when they might see their child begin to gain again post-wean. So let’s see if we might understand what to expect by looking at how orally-eating children typically gain weight.
Improving Your Child's Oral Skills
One of the big questions that comes up as a child becomes more and more driven to eat orally is “How do I get their skills to catch up?” While some kids will need the help of a local feeding therapist to more intensively work on the muscles for biting and chewing, there are some things that we can do to help set our kids up to be successful, as well as help progress their skills for biting and chewing naturally.
