“But what if it doesn’t work?” Coping with the Fear of a Failed Wean
When starting a wean, there are so many questions. One of the recurring fears that I discuss with parents is: What if this doesn’t work, where do we go from here? When tackling this answer, it’s really important to back up a step and to start with another question: How do we define success and “working”?
Staging Your Meal
Mealtime staging is an intentional method of food presentation that takes into account 1)
nutrition, 2) efficiency, and 3) skill development in order to optimize each meal to meet the needs of the child in that moment. So, as we wean, we pay good attention to a child’s eating age (calculated based on the time the child became an oral eater), while remembering that oral motor skills develop over time: kids learn to eat by eating.
Grazing is for Sheep…
When children who have been tube fed for a majority of their lives begin the process of weaning off of the tube, it becomes really easy to feed them all day long – because we’re so invested in them eating, and we don’t ever want to tell them that it’s not time to eat.