| Eating Disorders |
| Family & Relationships |
| Nutrition |
| Children With Special Needs |
| Psychology |
| Health & Fitness |
| Psychopathology |
| Diet & Nutrition |
Summary
Summary
Help kids develop a positive relationship with food, so they can become healthy and adventurous eaters for life!
Is your child a picky eater? Do they insist on having the same foods served over and over again? Be it chicken nuggets, pizza, pancakes, or French fries--if your child is only eating a few foods regularly, their diet may be seriously lacking in the nutrition and vitamins they need to grow and be healthy. And you may feel stressed out and frustrated at mealtime. For many kids, picky eating is a sensory issue--whether it's the smell, taste, texture, or appearance of food. So, how can you help your child overcome these sensory sensitivities and ensure that they get the nourishment they need?
Written by a pediatric occupational therapist with a specialty certification in feeding, eating, and swallowing, Raising Adventurous Eaters offers eight evidence-based sensory strategies to help kids foster a healthy relationship with food. You'll learn all about how picky eating can be caused by sensory processing differences, and find step-by-step strategies for dealing with each sense. By learning to lean into their senses, children will better understand what's going on in their bodies. This fosters an intuitive eating approach, teaching kids to listen to their body's hunger and fullness cues and respect and respond to those cues appropriately.
Whether or not your child has a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder (SPD), or simply has sensory sensitivities when it comes to food, this book will help you set your child up for successful mealtimes, turning the most stressful time of the day into a time that your family can spend relaxing and bonding together around the table.
Author Notes
Lara Dato, MS, OTR/L , is a pediatric occupational therapist with a specialty certification in feeding, eating, and swallowing--one of approximately fifty professionals with these credentials in the US. In addition to years as a feeding therapist, she has taught courses on feeding therapy across the country. Her passion is helping picky eaters and their families find joy in adventurous eating!
Foreword writer Suzanne Mouton-Odum, PhD , is a licensed psychologist who has helped children and families manage anxiety and difficult behaviors for more than twenty years. She coauthored Psychological Interventions for Children with Sensory Dysregulation and Helping Your Child with Sensory Regulation with Ruth Goldfinger Golomb.
Foreword writer Ruth Goldfinger Golomb, LCPC , is senior clinician, supervisor, and codirector of the training program at the Behavior Therapy Center of Greater Washington, where she has worked for more than thirty years.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
Recalling how parents used to traumatize their picky-eater kids by forcing them to stay at the table until they cleaned their plates, pediatric "feeding therapist" Dato offers better alternatives. Her guide is organized by sense--touch, hearing, sight, smell and taste--since, Dato notes, that's how children explore food. She offers common-sense strategies, such as giving kids small servings and setting expectations, including asking kids to put at least one spoonful of each dish on their plate. Other suggestions: parents should be good role models, sampling everything they want their kids to test; avoid serving the same meal two or three days in a row; and before heading to a restaurant, go to a park so kids can "run off some extra steam," "work up an appetite" and perhaps be more willing to sit still and eat. Tips also cover food challenges associated with school and holidays. Real families' stories and more recent studies would have deepened her coverage, but Dato does provide a useful resource for families eager to reduce fights about food and ensure that children are eating healthily and with pleasure.
Library Journal Review
Mealtime is often a battleground in which parents may feel they are losing ground. Limited food choices, picky eaters, nutrition, and sensory processing issues create a complicated landscape. A mental health professional with a sensory processing disorder specialty, Dato advocates using a sensory-based approach to exploring food. For example, allowing children to become sous chefs involved in the process of preparing meals, utilizing plating effectively, minimizing distractions, and most of all, making mealtime fun, the parent can create an environment designed to expose the child to new foods. Kids with auditory sensitivities and digestive issues are also given space in this work. This book is exhaustive in length and breadth, but its many practical suggestions are worth it. Dining out, holidays, and school sections are incorporated, and the author supplies links to online worksheets to increase the resources available to parents. VERDICT A must for families who struggle with mealtime.
