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
Do you know what I love most about our team? Their strong desire to learn and keep increasing their knowledge in paediatric feeding.
Every Tuesday, our team has individual professional development sessions with me. These training sessions focus specifically on their learning objectives.
Every Thursday, we meet again for individual supervision sessions to review their upcoming clients therapy session plans.
Both days help grow clinical reasoning skills and build feeding therapists who confidently manage their caseloads. I know my team value these times with me and I’m honoured to be part of their early careers and clinical growth. I often make jokes about how I want them to contact me when THEY are 41 years old to tell me how their careers have tracked.
Ps- do you want to know Saffron is doing? She is increasing her knowledge of cervical auscultation. A swallow test commonly used to assist our feeding assessments. We were reviewing the work done in this area by Dr Thuy Frakking (amazing Speech Pathologist) and one of my research supervisors (who is equally amazing) Dr Kelly Weir.
Check out the RCT in cervical auscultation journal article here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27402004/
I wonder how you feel when you are eating at a restaurant and you see a child at another table watching their iPad or reading their book and not engaging with their family?
Before you shame or judge them, I wonder if you can be curious about how that iPad or book might be supporting them to regulate and eat their meal in what can be a very over stimulating environment?
Let’s be more open and understanding about neurodivergent children and support their families to feel safe and secure in putting accommodations for their child so they can all enjoy a meal without judgement from neurotypical people.
#traumainformed #neurodivergence #letseatfeedingtherapy
“let’s talk about food on the plane and food when you arrive in your home country for your child (on the autism spectrum)”.
knowing that these experiences can be one of the most challenging things for families on holiday. Will their child be able to eat anything?
And hear a parent say-
“I think we are good! We have worked in feeding therapy on building my child’s acceptance of different types of bread, hot chips and pasta. I think if the meal is bread/hot chips and meat, he will eat it.” 👏
Supporting children on the autism spectrum with social inclusion in feeding therapy using a bigger lens that helps families confidently go on holidays and share experiences with the knowledge that their kid will be fine! 🙌
I love my job and my team! Val #letseatfeeding #letseatfeedingtherapy
Ps- Are you wondering about the black bread?
It’s not for feeding therapy. It’s the regular rotation of breads in my house with my kids (yes I practice what I preach). We rotate from white (their favourite) to brown (rye) and black (charcoal) and all of the variances in between (chia, spelt, wholemeal etc). It does challenge my kids but as they said - “it tastes like fresh sourdough bread - just in a black colour” 🤣
If you have time, please consider it. Your child needs to be aged between 12-24 months and doesn’t need to have a feeding difficulty.
The study is not linked with me or my business, I’m just sharing it because the more participants they get, the stronger the results.
Happy long weekend! Val
https://www.facebook.com/OlgaTennisonAutismResearchCentre/posts/10161703505168998
Why we are excited about this workshop?
We hear time and time again that it’s hard to get experience and PD in paediatric feeding. Our responsive feeding workshop guides new clinicians step by step using multiplie videos to teach you how to do a feeding assessment and therapy program.
The intermediate workshop guides clinicians through complex cases including children on the autism spectrum, children with tube feeding and children with complex diagnoses.
So come join us- 2 Speech Pathologists (based in Sydney and Newcastle) with close to 40 years of clinical experience in the industry who make learning fun, interactive and inspiring using practical case studies from our own private feeding practices.
More about our workshop can be found here- https://feedingtherapyaustralia.com.au/paediatric-feeding-workshops/
Have a lovely weekend,
Val and Debbie
Feeding Therapy Australia
#feedingtherapyaustralia #letseatfeeding #feedingkidssydney
