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
What is your feeding approach?
At Let’s Eat! we often get asked by parents and professionals about our feeding approach. After working in the industry for 18 years, I have refined and developed our Let’s Eat! approach so that it continues to be evidence based and clinically delivers the feeding outcomes that parents want.
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!
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 always wanted to specialise in this caseload then this is the dream job for you. Essential criteria Relevant
Exploring crunchy and battered potato vs battered pumpkin - we practice what we preach at Let’s Eat! And our admin staff even get involved in food exploration 😉
The girls did a great job! Go Ell and Keira! 🎃
It is wonderful to say for the first time in a long time that our books are open!
We had been letting new clients sneak in over the last 2 months but now we can open it officially. Unfortunately, there are no afterschool appointments available so if you are flexible with your appointment times and days, please call us.
Appointments are available for both home visits (within Newcastle and the Maitland region only) and clinic-based appointments for both private and NDIS-funded clients. There is a small waiting list (7 clients) but if you would like an appointment for your child with our team, then give us a call as, for the first time, we can confidently say "we will see you soon!"
Please call the office at (02) 4911 2364 and Keira or Glynis will take your details.
Thank you,
Val, Mel, Katie, Saffron, Ell, Keira, and Glynis
Let's Eat! Team
Family dinner meals come with so much pressure. To sit "perfectly" at the table, eat a nutritious meal, and "chat" about topics.
For some families, particularly those with neurodivergent children, getting through the day itself is exhausting which means they are possibly over-tired by dinner time and more likely to refuse to sit and eat.
Whenever families are struggling with dinner time, I am curious to explore why. If the child's sensory cup is overflowing, then perhaps sitting in front of the TV and eating dinner as a family is exactly what they (and the parents need).
Sometimes, it takes a therapist to say - "how are you feeling as a parent at dinner time?" to challenge the stereotype.
Family connection doesn't have to happen at the dinner table especially if it isn't bringing that family joy.
Let's be more open to creating joyful moments with families instead of what we believe is "perfection". Because isn't that more important?
Val #letseatfeedingtherapy #neurodiversityacceptance
Explore a different cuisine (Ethiopian food), try a new food (goat curry), talk about sensory food preferences (goat curry was a 5/5) and ponder the bigger changing conversation about neurodiversity. So much laughter and connection x
Ashleigh and Kiera, we missed you!
Have a lovely weekend everyone
Val, Mel, Saffron, Katie, Ell, Ashleigh and Keira #letseatfeedingtherapy
