Helping Families Feed Their Children

Nutrition therapy is a client-centered approach that focuses on beliefs, emotions and behaviors as they relate to food and eating challenges.  Nutrition therapy goes beyond the teaching professional and learning client. It is about working with the client to meet health goals. Treatment plans are individualized and evolve over time. Plans can be coordinated with other health professionals.

Case Studies

Feeding challenges range from behaviors that make mealtime unproductive and unpleasant to complicated responses to physical and emotional factors that make eating by mouth and consuming sufficient calories a challenge.

Nutrition therapy helps parents whose children have feeding challenges. Feeding children can be hard because nutrition blends the personal with the biological. Feeding challenges in young children can confuse professionals because physical, developmental and behavioral problems appear with similar symptoms.

Case Studies

Nutrition therapy can help with feeding struggles, weight concerns, and challenges associated with developmental delays. Sometimes, feeding problems can be associated with positive and and negative changes in a child’s life such as the aftermath of surgery, a change of residence, divorce, a new school or other changes that have created resistant feeding in your child.

For parents of young children, it means that techniques from family dynamics are employed along with attachment and child development theory. These theories of development and family life let parents understand the child’s point of view. When the child sees the parent change, the child often feels freer to eat well.

For parents of atypically developing children, pediatric nutrition therapy offers a way into feeding problems. Feeding challenges in young children can confuse because physical, developmental and behavioral problems appear with similar symptoms. Tapping into the child’s and family’s strengths.  Pediatric nutrition therapy taps into the child’s inner drive towards mastery irrespective of the child’s outer condition.

Sessions last from 45 to 60 minutes. Meetings are take place 2 times a month until improvements appear. Improvements are usually improved growth and improved eating behavior. Then the meetings decease to once a month or less often.

It depends. Some challenges become manageable quickly while others may take months. Progress, however small, is visible to the parent.

Sessions are held in the home and the office. Beginning sessions are best held in the home. The child is usually more relaxed in the natural environment. Video and Skype sessions are also possible when a home visit is not practical.

In the beginning, we examine the diet and feeding practices. Once dietary and feeding goals are established, we work on observing, refining suggests, and alternative strategies such as cooking together, play and group meals. Coached meals are a popular strategy. Parents may want to discuss health concerns and ways in which nutrition therapy should be integrated into other therapies.