Why is My Weaning Child Waking Up at Night?
Weaning your child from a feeding tube can be stressful and exhausting for a number of reasons, one being that often, a weaning child can begin to wake up at night, crying for reasons that they can’t quite articulate. And while 3 am is sleepy time – especially for us parents! – there are some good ideas for helping you to get through.
Pre-Weaning Strategies for Toddlers
Being the parent of a toddler is exceptionally fun and rewarding. It can also be exhausting. Developmentally, toddlers are learning to be independent people. Having a toddler with a feeding tube brings its own set of challenges. How do we, as loving caregivers, help the toddlers in our lives with tubes get ready to participate in a wean during this sometimes challenging developmental stage?
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.
What Weaning Looks Like Over the Holidays
I learned how to let go of my anxiety-ridden control tactics, and my daughter found her appetite and learned to eat happily and independently. But that took time, patience, and a lot of help. And looking back, there is one thing that I would tell that tired, frustrated mom who skipped Thanksgiving dessert to cry in the bathroom.
Why Won’t My Tube-Fed Child Eat?
What can feel more devastating than initial placement of the tube is that moment you realize that, even though your child’s medical issues have resolved, the feeding tube remains. And the question that most often persists at this stage is simple: Why won’t my child just eat?
Tricks and Treats: How Halloween Candy Can Foster Food Play!
There are so many ways to explore foods – to learn about them and to increase your sensory understanding of them (eventually leading to the sensory experience of eating them). And Halloween provides the perfect opportunity for some messy, candy-filled playtime!
The Eating World of Toddlers
Unpredictable, but typical, toddler behaviors around food can be stressful for families weaning their tube-fed children. But rather than pulling your hair out, I want to offer a few suggestions for how to navigate the two most typical (yet frustrating) mealtime behaviors that toddlers exhibit.
Why "Eating Age" Matters to a Recently Weaned Child
It can be tricky not to compare your newly weaned 1-year-old to her peers who have been oral from day one. But before you panic, and worry that weaning wasn’t enough, let me remind you of one important principle: eating age.
Portion Sizes for Children: How Much is Enough?
It can be difficult to know exactly how much food your child should eat. So today, I wanted to offer some insight into what and how much to offer your child so that he might re-establish healthy “full” and “hungry” cues.
What We Learned During the Weaning Process
Our son is free from the NG tube after only 3 weeks, thanks to the incredible team at Growing Independent Eaters! And now that we’re at the end of our weaning journey, we have to share some of the things we learned in the hopes that it will help some of you to believe that weaning is impossible.
Why It’s Time to Put the Sticker Chart Away
Children are not “good” for eating, and “naughty” for not – and this is especially true for those who have been tube fed for all or most of their lives. For this population, “not eating” is a strangely appropriate response to being tube fed.
Bonding with Your Tube-Fed Baby
Losing the ability to feed your baby, whether you had planned nursing or snuggling with a bottle, is heartbreakingly hard. However, we can still bond and share togetherness around feeding – by broadening the definition of “feeding” to “proving nutrition so our baby can thrive.”
Working with Your Medical Team
Lead Parent Coach Olga shares some ideas for working with your medical team before and during a wean.
Hunger and Satiety Regulation: Part Two
Hunger and satiety regulation not only impacts feeding behaviors, but it can tell us if a child is getting enough nourishment to sustain sufficient growth.
Hunger and Satiety Regulation: Part One
Hunger and satiety regulation play a pivotal role in successfully weaning off tube feeds. At Growing Independent Eaters, we often divide a child’s weaning plan into four phases to establish hunger and satiety regulation.
“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”?
All Words Matter
So often I hear loving and well-intended caregivers using phrases like 'I was able to,' or how do I 'get it into them' (referring to food, utensils, or oral motor therapy tools getting into children). How do I 'get them to open their mouths' so I can 'do x to them.' I hear meals described as feeds, sessions, therapy, or exercises. Lots of words that describe doing things TO our kids.
Gimmicks and Gadgets
Every caregiver I’ve encountered has travelled down what I like to call the “weaning worry spiral.” And we travel it because weaning can trigger incredible stress – stress that leads us to try anything and everything to just get our kids to take one, big bite!
Understanding the "Picky Eater"
As a kid, I was the designated “picky eater” of the family. Every family has one, and we all know who they are. My mother would often introduce me to new people as “her picky eater” and the one “whose best vegetables are ketchup and pumpkin pie.” I would slink off with the kids, doing my best to disappear until the inevitable dinner bell rung and I'd have to endure the humiliation of being the picky eater in front of strangers.
Weaning and Weighing
Starting a feeding tube wean can be scary for parents because the idea of cutting calories to establish hunger regulation often leads to some initial weight loss. And setting your child up to lose weight is counterintuitive to everything we have been focused on since birth!