Five ways facilitation can turn into pressure with extreme picky eating

1. Offer opportunities to sample new foods in a low-pressure environment such as Costco, Trader-Joes or other stores with samples. facilitation: “I’m glad you liked it, I’ll pick some up next time I’m at Kroger (Walmart, etc.). Can you help me find oranges?” pressure: “Okay, but there are 64 of them and you promise you’ll eat them all if I buy them?” (“I will!” he insists, but you still have 62 of them a year later…) 2. Your child eats some gnocchi with pesto off your plate at a restaurant. facilitation: Offer to put a few on his plate (if you are comfortable with it he may continue to eat them from your plate for now if he doesn’t want them on his plate). Maybe pick up some gnocchi later in the week or offer pesto with pasta as an option the next time you serve spaghetti. (You could try to ask what he likes about the dish, the pesto or the gnocchi, but keep it casual and change the topic. Consider not drawing attention to it if your child is super sensitive to any interest/focus on his eating…) pressure: On the way home you go to a store and buy two packages of gnocchi and three jars of pesto, telling your son, “We’ll have it again tomorrow since you liked it so much! We’re so proud of you that you added a new food!” 3. Offer a paper napkin with meals so your child can spit food out (get food out of their mouth without gagging or vomiting). facilitation: Place the napkin next to each setting, or have a child...

What is “Responsive” Feeding Therapy?

Responsive feeding therapy is facilitating (re)discovery of internal cues, curiosity and strengths, while building skills (mastery).   “You don’t teach development, development is discovery.” Serena Wieder PhD (video on DIR Floortime)   Responsive therapies respond to each child, meeting the child where he or she is, not following a strict protocol without deviation.         By necessity, this occurs within a relationship. The primary is between the parent and the child, otherwise known as the “feeding relationship.” (Satter, Chatoor…)     Responsive feeding and feeding therapies also happen in relationship between the child and any adult feeding or providing food and meals to the child, and with any therapists involved in more formal therapies.     “Happiness is the most important factor at mealtimes and in therapy programs to help children develop feeding skills.” Suzanne Evans Morris SLP PhD Therapist and author, Pre-Feeding Skills     What do you think? What do responsive feeding therapies mean to you? Share this...

Facilitating (Not Forcing) Your Child’s Eating (Extreme Picky Eating Edition)

“I’m not forcing, I’m just aggressively facilitating…” I was watching a show on Netflix* when I caught this line, “I’m not forcing, I’m just aggressively facilitating.” My ears perked at the words facilitation and force, and of course made me think of children with extreme picky eating, of feeding, and the “aggressive facilitation” that can sometimes happen, even in feeding therapies. There is much research that suggests that when children are pressured or coerced to eat, overall intake, and intake of fruits and veggies decreases.  Here are a few examples… “…approximately half of all mothers and a greater proportion of fathers… ignore the child’s hunger signals and may use force, punishment, or inappropriate rewards to coerce the child to eat. These practices initially appear effective, but become counterproductive, resulting in poor adjustment of energy intake, consumption of fewer fruits and vegetables, and a greater risk of under- or overweight.” (Kerzner 2015) “…stringent parental controls can… limit children’s acceptance of a variety of foods and disrupt children’s regulation of energy intake by altering children’s responsiveness to internal cues of hunger and satiety.” (Brown & Ogden, 2004) Pressure to eat likely disrupts child’s ability to respond to internal cues of hunger and satiety (Carper et al., 2000) Pressure to eat … “exacerbate feeding problems and make mealtimes more negative for both parent and child.” (Harris 1992; Skuse 1993) Pressuring strategies could be implicated in the development and persistence of these problems (Farrow & Blissett, 2008) Pressure to eat predicted food avoidance behaviors: slow eating, emotional undereating, satiety responsiveness (Powell 2011) Parent prompts assoc w/ food avoidant behaviors, correcting for child emotionality and maternal...

Trust Your Turtle: Patience with Picky Eating Progress

Here’s a story I read recently and shared with a client when she asked, “How can I get my daughter to accept new foods on her plate once she’s feeling good about her safe foods? Can’t I just put them on her plate?”   A woman was with her college geology class on a field trip by a river. She noticed a turtle up the river bank near a road and worried that the turtle would get hit by a car. So, she carried the turtle back down the hill and put it in the water. Afterwards, the professor came to her and said, “That turtle has probably spent weeks crawling up the hill to lay her eggs in the muddy slope and now she will have to start all over again.” The moral was, “Ask the turtle first.” (Gloria Steinem from her book, My Life on the Road) (See below our clarification of “ask”. Most children won’t want to be verbally queried along the way. Our moral is to be responsive to your turtle.)    What does this have to do with feeding? Well, many children with extreme picky eating have anxiety around foods, and often have struggled for years. As parents, and even professionals, we hope for and want improvements NOW, or in say,  six weeks. But progress is generally slow, slow, slow, and it might not look like what we think of as “progress” (eating new foods). Sometimes when we miss early signs of progress (less anxiety, eating more safe foods, curious about foods but not yet tasting or eating them...) it is easy to want to rush the process, to pick up our little turtles and carry...

Childhood Fears: Food or Fluffy, the Fear is Real

When M was little she had a dog phobia. I’m talking screaming, climbing on me, uncontrollable fear of even a toy poodle.  I can’t count how many people tried to talk her out of her fear, usually with a dog thrust into her personal space, and often against my explicit requests for them to stop. Take the German shepherd owner whose dog was off-leash, jumping on me while M clawed at my hair shrieking, and the owner kept smiling, “Oh, she won’t hurt you! She’s very gentle.” Well-intentioned dog owners (including friends and family) would bring dogs closer, insisting the dog wasn’t scary and everyone loved the dog, and, “Stop being so silly!” (super helpful)  or, “Look, Timmy is younger than you, and he’s petting the doggie!” (Throw some shame in while you’re at it! Works every time!)  I wish we could have had a sign at those times that said, “Seriously afraid of dogs. Back off. It’s not your job to get my kid over her fears…” It is this sticker that I saw on my walk home that led to this post. If I was behind a car on a hill and it started rolling, I might get mad or honk. But with this sign (Kid Driver   Manual), I know it’s a young person who is learning and I’ll be more patient. This sign reminds us to cut this kid driver some slack; have a little patience and understanding (something I struggle with behind the wheel sometimes). Of course it made me think of kids learning to eat. Imagine the child with extreme picky eating who only takes crackers at...

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