The Interdisciplinary Weaning Team: Who Does What
Elisabeth Kraus, MA
Growing Independent Eaters takes an interdisciplinary approach to weaning, which is a fancy way of saying that we believe families are best-supported when they are supported by a team who views their child as a whole person, rather than merely numbers on a growth chart. That’s why families who wean with us get an entire team of professionals to support them. Here’s who they are, and what they do.
A Social Worker/Mental Health Counselor:
Families who have navigated complex medical situations with their children are often exhausted, traumatized, and anxious about the journey in front of them. This is especially impactful as they navigate a tube wean, which essentially moves the control of a child’s nutrition from the parent and to the child – and that can be scary! Inducing a wide array of questions from “what happens if they lose weight?” “will weaning impact brain development?” and “what happens if this doesn’t work?”
Because we know the anxiety to come in weaning, we believe that parents and caregivers deserve the chance to receive mental health support that will help them to both prepare for that anxiety and to make a plan for coping with it. And that is the service and support that our Social Workers/Mental Health Therapists provide.
A Feeding Therapist:
We recognize that children who are fully tube-fed should not be expected to eat additional calories by mouth. Because of this, children enter the tube weaning scenario with oral motor skills that are younger than they are – and this is ok! Children learn to eat by eating, which means that oral motor skills develop as the child weans and learns to eat on their own.
Our Feeding Therapists help to support this process of skill development: they work to support families in understanding what foods to offer; how to monitor their child for signs of an unsafe swallow; what cup, bottle, straw, or nipple size to offer; and how to support biting, chewing, gagging, and more.
A Registered Dietitian:
Concerns about growth are often at the forefront of a parents’ mind when they are considering a wean scenario, and right behind those concerns are questions about hydration. And this is why it’s important to have a competent Dietitian who can help to answer these questions!
Dietitians can help families to evaluate a child’s growth to know if weaning is safe, and they can help families know when and how to monitor weight loss during the wean to ensure that it remains within the safe window. Our dietitians also help families to monitor hydration and to help mitigate issues with constipation if and when they arise.
A Parent Coach:
While nothing can replace competent medical advice, sometimes – when you are in the thick of weaning and nothing seems to be clicking – all you need is a friend, who has gone through what you’re going through to come alongside with encouragement, comradery, compassion and advice.
And that’s exactly what our Parent Coaches provide. Parent Coaches are peer mentors who have navigated tube weaning in their personal lives, and who can help to answer the million parenting questions that come up in the process! They can provide compassion when you navigate fear and uncertainty, and they can provide advice on common issues like mealtime meltdowns, practicing the Division of Responsibility, and establishing healthy boundaries during mealtimes.
This kind of interdisciplinary team provides wonderful, holistic support to families because they are not limited by specialty or personal experience. Similarly, they do not navigate the pressure to have expertise outside of their specialty. This means that families who work with GIE not only receive excellent weaning advice for their child – they receive it for themselves, too!