Feeding Your Growing Child
Thank you to Kelly Longergan, speech-language pathologist, for sharing this information with our Direct Primary Care families at rootsMD! Kelly has over 15 years experience working with infants, toddlers and children to help make mealtime successful. Whether it’s learning to drink from a bottle, progressing through table foods, picky eating, or more complex issues for kids transitioning off tube feeding or facing oromotor control challenges, her direct-care feeding clinic can help!
Key takeaways:
- Mealtime doesn’t have to be stressful
- Have fun and say ’yes’ to the mess
- Don’t force your child to eat things they don’t like
- Make sure your child is seated in the right position when eating
- Have a more structured mealtime schedule and keep meals under 30 minutes
- If you’re concerned, complete the self-assessment questionnaire, and talk to your pediatrician or give me a call
Strategies to help your child try new foods: ** Remember that it can take 10-15 exposures for a child to like a food. Have your child:
- Pick out foods at the store
- Help you prepare foods
- Limit grazing
- Talk about foods with objective statements (e.g., orange: is sweet, a little tart, lots of water (vs. squishy), have to bite the outside)
- Provide a balanced, nutritional meal for your child and let them choose what they want to eat vs. forcing them to try everything
- Eat with your child when possible
- Food/meal in muffin tin, ramekins, etc.
- Place a small amount of a new or non-preferred food (~1 Tbsp) on their plate, without the expectation that they will eat it.
Helpful Resources:
- Link to online self-assessment questionnaire: https://questionnaire.feedingmatters.org/questionnaire
- General information:
- To contact Kelly Lonergan, MS, CCC-SLP, C/NDT at Pediatric Feeding Therapy LLC:
- www.pediatricfeedingwi.com
- kelly@pediatricfeedingwi.com
- (608) 218-5631 • 200 W Main St, Suite 102, Mount Horeb, WI 53572
