What’s Inside Our Feeding Tool Kit?
At Occupational Therapy Helping Children, some of our therapists recently had the pleasure of attending Melanie Potock’s course on ‘Your Feeding Tool Kit’. Melanie is a Paediatric feeding expert & author who shared her knowledge on feeding therapy with practical parenting and therapy-based strategies to promote healthy eating habits.
When it comes to developing a feeding tool kit for our child, we take the approach of considering the whole child. This is inclusive of, the child’s physiology, sensory profile, and motor development. By doing so, we can identify the difference between what’s known as a picky eater versus, a potential feeding disorder and what intervention is best suited. However, for the purpose of this blog post, we’re going to take an insight into some of our favourite OT strategies & considerations when developing our tool kit in therapy!
Is your child constipated?
To our surprise, 1 in 3 toddlers can have trouble with passing stool on a regular basis. However, it’s not always about the frequency of going, but rather a variety of other indicators. Some of these include:
- Unusual smelling stool or gas.
- Irregular stool texture.
- Stool size e.g., small pellets versus large stools.
- Withholding; and
- Undie ‘tracks.
With these considerations in mind, we can determine whether the cause of your picky eater is due to constipation. Overall, it’s important to remember that passing stool regularly stimulates appetite & eating stimulates the urge to go! Natural is always best, so here are our few tips in helping promote your child pass stool on a regular basis:
- Eating both soluble & Insoluble fibre: both these types of fibre promote different areas. Soluble fibres attract water to our stool e.g., peas and citrus fruits, whilst insoluble fibre speeds up the transit through the gut e.g., bananas, oatmeal, brown rice.
- Exercise: the more we exercise, the more our appetite increases.
- Creating a routine around being seated on the toilet the same time everyday for short periods of time; and
- Consuming water in drinks & in food.
However, there may be the case where constipation relief is required. In these circumstances we provide you with permission to give your child apple juice! We want this to be treated like medicine, so no diluting!
Sensory Integration Approach
Sensory integration (SI) incorporates the use of our seven senses. For further information on these senses, feel free to visit our blog post page under the filter ‘sensory processinghttps://occupationaltherapy.com.au/blog/#(news|filter)=.sensory-processing;’. SI is in everything we do, from being able to see the food with our eyes and smelling it with our noses to grasping it in our hands and fingers. One of the most crucial takeaways with feeding & SI is knowing that taste is limited to the five sensations on our tongue, being salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and savory. However, it’s flavour that combines smell and taste and all the textures and temperatures we experience when trying new foods.
Below is a list of some of our go to strategies to make SI and feeding fun!
- Making objects, people & animals out of produce
- Creating beetroot tattoos
- Creating floating ‘foods’ by adding water to bowels
- Utilise bubbles!
- Toys in mouse or pudding
- Make meltable pretzel sticks.
- Blanch vegetables to provide more moisture.
- Use scissors to ‘fringe’ foods like nuggets, waffles, and pancakes!
Seated Posture & Stability
Kids always seek out stability, thus, it’s important we provide them with the appropriate base of support when engaging in mealtimes. Rule of thumb is, we want to avoid the slight anterior pelvic tilt (hips tilted forward) and try achieving a 90-degree angle. Reason being, this will position our child’s head directly over their shoulders, ensuring their airways and esophagus is aligned.
Another hack is ensuring you have adjustable footrests, whether they be portable or part of your high chair. By having one, we reduce fatigue during mealtimes and risk of choking as the trunk is supported. Our little one’s attention is also improved as they are focused straight ahead!
Lastly, we want to ensure our child’s ears and shoulders are aligned to promote center of gravity and our elbows are comfortable on the table.
Stay tuned for the next blog on how to address the anxious eater in addition to these tips!
If you’d like to further educate yourself on developing the right feeding toolkit for your child, contact our clinic for guidance or check out Melanie’s website at https://mymunchbug.com/ and Instagram page!
Reference
Potock, M. (2023 March). Your Feeding Tool Kit: Treating the Whole Child & the Whole Family. Professional Development Course presented for Sydney Speech Clinic, Sydney, Australia.
