about the book
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Learn specific strategies to:
Decrease anxiety
Optimize appetite
Address sensory and autism-spectrum related challenges
Support nutrition and healthy growth
Restore peace to your dinner table
Foundation of Understanding
Chapter 1: Understanding ‘Normal’
- Typical Intake, Growth and Development
- Sensory Continuum
- Appetite and Interest
Chapter 2: Understanding Your Child’s Challenges
- “It Hurts”: Medical Challenges
- “I Can’t”: Oral Motor
- “I Don’t Like How This Feels”: Sensory
- “I Don’t Want To”: Temperament and Power Struggles
- “I’m Scared”: Negative Experiences
- Misunderstanding Can Worsen or Cause Feeding Problems
- Diagnostic Considerations
Chapter 3: Understanding Your Role
- The Worry Cycle of Feeding
- What Are You Worried About: Nutrition, Growth
- Counterproductive Feeding, the Why and the How
- Why Kids Push Back
- Kids Learn to Eat for the Wrong Reasons
- Pressure Increases Anxiety, Decreases Appetite
- Pressure Makes Kids Like Food Less
Steps to Progress
- Address Your Anxiety
- Ideas to Lessen Anxiety
- Your Child’s Anxiety
- Decreasing Power Struggles
- Protecting Your Child From Pressure From Others
Chapter 5: Step Two: Routine
- Routine to the Rescue: Helps Behavior, Anxiety, and Appetite
- Getting to the Table
- Flexibility in Routine
- Your Children Will Test the Routine:
- When They Don’t Eat, When They Won’t Come to the Table, When They Act Out
- The Structure That Isn’t
- Nurture Your Child
Chapter 6: Step Three: Have Family Meals
- What Is a Family Meal?
- Roles at the Table: Yours and Your Child’s
- Family Table Mood Makeover
- Serving Family or Buffet Style
- Dessert
- Paper Napkin Security Blanket
- Offering Food the Better Way
- What to Say What Not to Say
- Eating Together Away From Home
- Nannies and Daycare
Chapter 7: Step Four: WHAT and HOW to Serve
- Menu plan for the whole family
- Support Nutrition with Bridges
- Sensory Preference Matching
- When You Don’t Know How to, Don’t Want to, or Can’t Cook (Yet)
- Introducing New Foods
- Preparing and Serving Meats and Fruits and vegetables
- Sweets and Treats
- Special Circumstances
Chapter 8: Step Five: Building Skills
- Building Skills and Familiarity, Motor-sensory, Drinking
- Addressing Challenges
- Therapy Options
- Good Therapy
- Red Flags
- Long vs. Short term goals
Chapter 9: Steps Toward Hope and Progress
- Recognizing Progress
- Attitude and Anxiety First
- Stages of Progress
- When Progress Stalls
- Healthy and Happy
- Parting Words
Katja Rowell and Jenny McGlothlin have crafted a book that provides very specific suggestions to help parents both understand and address their picky child’s eating. It belongs in the library of every parent and therapist who wants to support a child’s (and a family’s) positive relationship with food and mealtimes.
Suzanne Evans Morris, PhD, SLPRowell and McGlothlin expertly illuminate the complex emotional world of children with extreme picky eating and the caregivers who struggle to feed them. Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating is a masterpiece of practical strategies, compassion, and reassurance perfect for parents, pediatricians, and anyone who remembers hating ‘just one more bite.’
Jessica Setnick MS, RD, CEDRDLots of books promise to help solve ‘picky eating’ problems, but this one actually does! Katja and Jenny have put together a comprehensive masterpiece of feeding advice for the parent struggling with the food-averse child.
Skye Van ZettenI would strongly recommend this book to any parent who is struggling with mealtime.
Erin Erickson, MPH, MN, RN,Katja Rowell, MD and Jennifer McGlothlin GET the anxiety and many challenges both children and families feel when children are highly selective eaters! They offer sensitive, thoughtful and practical suggestions to support families in their journey towards happier and healthier mealtimes.
Marsha Dunn Klein M.Ed., OTR/L, FAOTA