Sunday, September 18, 2011
Parent Support
I recently held a parent support group for families going through my feeding therapy program. Most of these parents have children with profound aversions to all types of foods, and as a result these children are underweight and undernourished. Through these parents' stories I hope to assist and resolve major issues in regards to picky eating, special diets, failure to thrive, oral motor weakness, inability to transition to more mature textures, and any other feeding concerns out there. I hope this blog helps parents struggling for answers. I welcome any questions and/or comments!!
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This is a great blog. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I have a question for you - my 7 month-old daughter is very healthy (20 pounds) from on-cue breastfeeding. She has not shown much interest in eating purees. She gagged on them early on and now will tolerate only a few bites (less than a tablespoon/meal) on most occasions. She does sometimes like to eat a mum mum cracker. Is there anything special I should do to help her learn to enjoy eating more?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Thank you for reading my blog- I hope to help people like yourself find answers that are sometimes not easy to find! Anyway, as far as your little one, it is hard to say without seeing your daughter, however in general when children are aversive to textures/foods (ie: gagging, turning head away, not willing to explore), the best way to start is to allow her to explore with her hands and make it fun. Put some of the puree on her tray and let her play in it- I know it sounds messy, but I promise it works! Use the same puree for about a week to get her used to the smell/sight/touch and spoon her some while she is playing with it on her tray. If you try this for a few weeks and you still don't see results, then my suggestion would be to go see a feeding therapist. Honestly, feeding therapy can be a very short process if the family seeks help quickly, otherwise behaviors develop and it becomes more of a complicated case.
ReplyDeleteI love your blog! My 8 month old recently started the Gerber puffs...although I have to help him get them in his mouth sometimes :) he also started Gerber stage 3 foods. He does fairly well with both-he gags with some of the "chunks" in the stage 3 foods. However, because he has only one tooth (actually, half a tooth, it just popped through) I am terrified to try feeding him any other finger foods for fear he'll choke. Do you have suggestions for some safe finger foods for him to start trying? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading my blog! First of all, I usually recommend skipping stage III because it is such a complicated texture. You might have more success with small pieces of a very soft food, such as banana, sweet potato, squash, baked apple, baked pear, etc. The stage III food is like a stew that your child has to hold the chunk while swallowing the puree or else he is going to gag- which is what you are seeing.
ReplyDeleteAs far as finger food- you are currently giving puffs, which are meltable solids. Other foods like this will be graham crackers, any buttery cracker, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Mum Mums, etc.
Stay tuned for my next post as many of my readers are wondering about finger foods and textures.