5 Tips for Managing Food Allergies
A diagnosis of food allergy instills fear in every parent. Even being a dietitian, this diagnosis was no easier for me to hear after my son had an anaphylactic reaction upon his first exposure to a peanut.
Differentiating Between a Food Allergy and Food Intolerance
Food allergies and intolerance continue to be a growing concern for caregivers and physicians alike. When a child presents for medical care with concern for an adverse food reaction, parents are often told their child has an allergy based on the symptoms without doing any formal testing.
Cow Milk or Plant Milk: What’s in Your Cart?
Grocers now stock a myriad of milk options. And as a parent, it can be difficult to wade through the piles of information to understand which option is the best for your family.
Cow Milk or Plant Milk: What’s in Your Cup?
When children are ready to wean from breast milk or formula, parents often question what type of milk to offer. Is plant milk better than cow milk or is cow milk better than plant milk?
What Helped Me While Weaning
“I’ll never forget the day our feeding therapist came to us and said, “If you’re not ready to explore weaning, I think we’ve gone as far as we can with therapy.” All the emotions seemed to hit at once. I had come to a place where I never thought I would see the day that my child was able to eat completely on her own. Though there was no medical reason for her to have a tube that could be identified anymore, it was surreal to hear that my little one was ready.
From start to finish, our wean took about 9 weeks. Here are the biggest lessons that I learned…”
Weaning’s Impact on Brain Development
“…when it comes time to consider whether or not weaning is safe for your child, naturally, you may have concerns about the way that a wean – particularly one that features the safe introduction of appetite by gradually reducing the number of calories put through a tube – would impact your child’s brain development. So, in an effort to answer these concerns, let’s take some time to understand two important principles.”
What’s YOUR Curve
Yes, we all want to see kids growing and thriving. Yes, we know that relatively consistent growth is necessary to support development, neurological flourishing, and your child’s full potential. But, we don’t really know what that “growth” looks like for any one, individual kid. Just like adults vary in sizes, so do kids!
Kids Learn to Eat by Eating
There is a common misperception when it comes to determining whether or not your child is ready to begin weaning from his or her feeding tube, and it is this: “Your child must be able to show that he or she can eat substantively before we begin to wean him or her from the feeding tube.”
Please, Just Swallow!
Over the years, I’ve talked with hundreds of parents who have spent hundreds of hours coaching their child to take hundreds of bites, only to watch those bites swirl around in the mouth and be spit right back out. And when all you want is for your sweet, tube-fed kiddo to take, enjoy, and actually swallow something, that experience can be endlessly – and I mean, ENDLESSLY – frustrating! After all, how hard can it be to swallow?
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.
When Picky Eating Becomes Problem Eating
The truth is that picky eating is normal for young children, so let’s take a look at what “typical” picky eating looks like in order to better understand when it is becoming problematic – and what to do if it is.
Two Types of Pressured Eating – and Why We Should Avoid Them
When you reflect on your childhood, do you recall feeling pressured to eat a certain food or meal? For me, it was meatloaf. I instantly knew when I asked my mom what’s for dinner and she said meatloaf, that is was going to be a terrible night.
Questions to Ask a Potential Weaning Program
Regardless of where you are in the process of thinking about weaning, and what your personal family goals are, we thought it might be helpful to look at some of the questions that we think should be asked of every weaning program -- and share our answers.
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.
Should I Switch My Child to a Blended Diet before We Wean?
The do’s and don’ts of pre-weaning can be difficult to assess and navigate. In particular, many families wonder about their child’s tolerance of tube feeds and how they might adjust in order to make the experience more comfortable and conducive to oral intake. Blended diets, in particular, spark curiosity, so let’s take a look at how they might factor into your child’s pre-weaning stage.
Weaning Triggers: What’s Normal and How to Cope
Parents whose children have struggled similarly to mine often face significant trauma triggers, and sometimes, our response to these triggers can unnecessarily stall the progress we make in weaning our children safely from feeding tubes. The minute we hear a cough or baby cry, the second there’s a gag, cough or hiccup – panic sets in. Because to a medically complex kiddo, every scenario feels like a medical emergency, even if it isn’t.
Swallow Studies: What They Tell Us….And What They Don’t
While swallow studies are a useful piece of the puzzle surrounding whether or not your child is able to swallow food and drink safely, they rarely provide us with an absolute, comprehensive picture of what’s going on during typical mealtimes. So, let’s take a look at how swallow studies are conducted, what kind of insight they provide, and how we ought to interpret their results.
Tubie Siblings – And How NOT to Overlook Them
When one of your kids is tube-fed or recently weaned, it’s easy to overlook the other kids at your dinner table, or forget that safe and joyful meals are just as important for non-tubies as for tube fed kids. I learned this the hard way – that there are a few things to be aware of when your tubie is not an only child.