Founded by Valerie Gent, Let's Eat! Feeding Therapy is a Newcastle based Private Paediatric Feeding intervention service for babies and children from birth to adolescence.
Feeding difficulties in babies and children can be very stressful for parents as well as their child. The goal of Let's Eat! is to empower the family to be able to understand and respond to the feeding difficulties their child may present with. Treatment is clinic based but home and school visits can be arranged with an additional travel fee.
The team at Let's Eat is passionate about feeding difficulties, we love working with families in a practical and team focused way.
We look forward to working with you too!
Starting Solids: Keeping safe with Baby-led Weaning
Welcome to part 2 of our “starting solids” blog. In the last post we focused on the more traditional “parent-led weaning” approach. You can check this one out here: Starting solids, parent-led weaning or baby-led weaning? – Let’s Eat! Feeding Therapy. This post will look at a feeding approach
Starting solids, parent-led weaning or baby-led weaning?
There is so much information online about starting your baby on solids which can make it very confusing and challenging to know where to start. Step one is determining whether your baby is ready… The World Health Organisation recommends starting solids by 6 months, but not before 4 months.
Paediatric Feeding Disorders (PFD) – the new diagnostic term..
Paediatric Feeding Disorders and why you may see us using this term in your child’s feeding reports. Up until recently, if you had a child with a feeding difficulty, your health providers may have termed it differently. A Speech Pathologist might have called it “delayed oral motor skills” while
How can I get feeding therapy for my child when I can’t go to a clinic in this COVID-19 telehealth world?
Getting feeding therapy for your child in this COVID-19 climate.
What I don’t recommend doing when you come to eat with your fussy eater…
Today in our Let’s Eat Team meeting, Ashleigh and I talked about fussy eaters and mealtime stress. The phrase of “parents provide and children decide” is commonly used and forms the platform of how we work with families. This phrase was coined by Ellyn Satter in her Division of
Swallowing tablets? Do you or your child have difficulties with it?
Do you know this is a question I often get asked and I know when I worked in acute hospitals, I often got asked by doctors to help patients with their meds. When a cousin recently asked me, I struggled to find a lot of information online and then
Are mealtimes a cause of stress in your household?
Here is my 6 step plan on how to serve it up and hopefully enjoy that family meal. We were all little once and as parents now, we serve up meals on what we know and often how we were served as children. This could be pre-plating and sitting
Practice makes perfect
Practice made perfect is the title of a journal article published in 2008. Although this article is now 12 years old, it is a good one that gives us as therapists and parents important information about how a child learns about a food. In our clinic, we often see
We are looking for a new therapist to join our team!
For the first time ever- this job position is open to a Speech Pathologist OR an Occupational Therapist. The catch is? Your role will be in paediatric feeding only as per our specialist feeding private practice. The upside? If you have loved feeding difficulties / fussy eating and have
Over the weekend, my sister and I (who both have kids) had a buzzing phone of messages with questions about starting solids.
So this week’s 5 day of Lets eat posts is for my adorable nephew and all the bubbas out there starting solids.
Day 1- solids is about a baby exploring new tastes and textures. Focus on this instead of how much they are eating.
Child led weaning is what my brother and his wife are doing (it’s a happy medium between baby led and the traditional method of solids).
My top tip is instead of spoon feeding your baby- consider dipping long shaped teethers in purée and giving it to your baby to suck and mouthe on. Even pre-load a spoon of purée and hand it to them to bring to their mouth. That allows the baby to lead the process of solids and encourages the hand to mouth mouthing and early munching modelling that we want to develop in children.
If they lean forward as you hold a spoon- consider this as your next dance step in the feeding dance of solids and feed them but don’t rush the process- watch their cues with spoon feeding and let them get messy with touching and exploring purée (yes even all over their clothes and hair 😉)
Why did I suggest “child led” to my brother? It’s the perfect combo of the best of both worlds. It supports finger foods and purée with the most importance factors of eating with your child and bringing them to the family table for meals.
What are the other 2 methods? and how do you know if your baby is ready for solids- head to our website for Ashleigh’s excellent blog post articles on baby led weaning and the traditional method of solid intro. Ash has also written our top tips and foods to be mindful of from a choking risk.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post ... and while I write each one- let me know your questions and top tips for my little bro.
👶 🥄 🍌 Val
How to support a positive feeding mindset with Easter and chocolate. Our Let’s Eat top tips.
1. FOOD LANGUAGE
Tip number one is the importance of good language- Don’t talk to your child about chocolate being unhealthy or bad for you. Chocolate is delicious and a wonderful celebration food (and a great source of dairy- calcium!). Please also be mindful about how you speak about chocolate to adults- you don’t need to burn the calories by exercising because you ate too much chocolate or eat less chocolate because it will make you fat. The way you speak about food impacts on how your child will see it with their own body image.
2. ACCESS
Tip 2- access to chocolate. Do you know what? It’s once a year- so it’s okay if your child eats chocolate (and a lot of it on Easter Sunday). Here is the thing- the more you forbid a food, the more a child desires it. So enable access and don’t worry- it’s okay if they over eat- it’s one day.
3. Next week, take the remainder eggs and chocolate and offer it at snack times with other foods eg crackers, fruit and cheese. You might find that after a day of over eating, this forbidden desire decreases and your child eats the crackers and fruit equally as the chocolate. This is a healthy approach to eating and one that we want for all kids.
4. Last tip? Children who graze are not hungry and in fact don’t eat well or enough over a period of time. So try as much as you can to have structured times for eating- play- and sleep. Remember snacks support appetite but grazing does not.
Wishing you and your family a safe and very happy Easter, see you next week-
Val, Ash and Laura- Let’s Eat! Feeding therapy team
#letseatfeeding
You can use cutters for all sorts of things and more importantly for fussy eaters, it helps peak their interest.... bunny rabbit pizzas anyone?
Flower toast?
Easter egg flat bread?
Here we are making spelt flour cookies (because I ran out of plain white flour 🙄). But you know what? They turned out perfectly and tasted just as yummy especially with smarties on top.
So give it a go- think broadly with your cookie cutters and have fun in the kitchen this Easter with your kids.
Ps- Easter themed cutters from Kmart $3- bargain! And cookie dough recipe in the latest Woolworths Easter magazine.
It got me thinking about fussy eaters. If you’re working on exploring a new food, almost anything can be coated in chocolate and set in an “Easter egg nest” in the fridge.
The traditional recipe is great for exploring crunchy noodles (for kids who don’t eat noodles or pasta), and the adapted recipe with these cooking photos is using cornflakes. You could pick any iron fortified cereal and have a messy exploration cooking session with your child.
Remember it’s about exploring and not eating (yet for your child). Your child can smell, feel and hear the sound of the cereal while you crunch on it - with no chocolate and with chocolate coating. And if they want to- they can do the same tasting exploration. But don’t tell them- model it and then just wait... if they feel ready and brave - they just might.... when they do, be the cool calm chicken and talk about the chocolate flavour, exploring possibilities - what would happen if we added white chocolate? Coconut? Sultanas?
We are having lots of fun in the let’s eat kitchen this week- give the Easter egg baskets a go, 100g melted chocolate with 100g dry Chinese fried noodles or any cereal of your choice, mix and set in the fridge for 20mins until they harden. You can do them in patty cases, on a biscuit or straight onto a tray lined with baking paper. Enjoy the messy cooking activity 😄
Seeing a therapist grow in her skill level exponentially.
At Let’s Eat! We take supervision and training very seriously. All new staff start out with weekly 1 -2 hours supervision for clients and then also have weekly 2 hour PD feeding training sessions with me. Then every fortnight we meet as a team to review a journal article and critically analyse the latest evidence around a topic This ensures their clients get time for discussion around session planning but for Laura, she also gets focused time to build her knowledge of feeding.
Paediatric feeding is not something that gets taught in any great length at university and as any therapist knows, doing one course isn’t enough to teach them anything.
Here is Laura with her Let’s Eat training folder - filled with different assessment and therapy teaching programs. Today our topic was focused on building her knowledge of responsive feeding.
She told me that she has finished her week with fire in her belly! And that makes me 🙌🙌🙌 because she is just as passionate about paediatric feeding as Ashleigh and I. Which makes for excellent feeding therapists who continually problem solve and do the best they can for their patients.
What an amazing week! Val
