Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating

© 2024 Wolf Rinke Associates. All rights reserved for this self-directed accredited learning activity. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission, except for brief excerpts, is prohibited.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of this CPE activity you will be better able to:

• Explain the terminology of common pediatric feeding problems.
• Recognize “typical” eating in the pediatric population.
• Identify the components of the “worry cycle” and how it can interfere with feeding choices.  
• Assess sources of parental anxiety associated with extreme picky eating.
• Identify what underlying challenges – medical, emotional, physical, and neurological - a child may be experiencing.
• Recommend how to decrease feeding power struggles between parent/caregiver and child.
• Explain the components of the STEPS approach to feeding therapy.
• Recommend strategies for establishing a structured feeding routine.
• Emphasize the importance of family meals.
• Evaluate the different consistencies/textures of foods.
• Discuss what a parent/caregiver’s role is like during the STEPS approach to feeding therapy.
• Suggest how to build bridges to new food acceptance.
• Recommend ways to build oral-motor/sensory skills for children outside of feeding therapy.
• Assess the stages of progress that a child/caregiver may experience beyond the STEPS approach.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Katja Rowell, MD is a family physician and childhood feeding specialist who is supportive to parents who worry about feeding and their child’s growth and weight gain. Known as “the Feeding Doctor”, she is a national expert on children, feeding, and the intersection of health and wellness. Rowell believes that helping children grow up to feel good about food and good about their bodies is the best preventive medicine there is. She presents workshops to parents and professionals across the country and writes on the importance of a healthy feeding relationship for online and print media in addition to seeing a wide range of clients. She is the author of Love Me, Feed Me. Rowell makes her home in the Twin cities, where she enjoys reading, camping, cooking for her family, and a husband who does the dishes.

Jenny McGlothlin, MS, CCC-SLP is a certified speech-language pathologist specializing in the evaluation and treatment of feeding disorders for children from birth through the teen years. She developed the STEPS feeding program at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders at University of Texas at Dallas, where she works with families on a daily basis to foster feeding skills that will serve a child for their lifetime. McGlothlin has been inducted into the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Hall of Fame for her work in the field. She frequently provides feeding workshops for parents and continuing education seminars and webinars for therapists. Making family meals a priority for her three young children, she also enjoys reading and spending time with her friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE STUDY GUIDE

Aurea Thompson MSH, RDN, CSP, LD is a Registered Dietitian and certified specialist in pediatric nutrition with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She has worked in the field of nutrition and pediatrics for over 20 years and has served Wolfson Children’s Hospital for the past 13 years. She is the author of Pediatric Nutrition for the School-Aged Child and has been a regular monthly contributor for Jax4Kids magazine for the past 7 years. Thompson was awarded the Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year Award from the Florida Dietetic Association in 2000 and has served her local Jacksonville Dietetic Association since 1993. As a voice for pediatric obesity, she presented “Ethical Issues of Pediatric Obesity” at the Sixth Annual Pediatric Bioethics Conference at the University of North Florida in 2013. As a wife and mother, she understands the challenges of balancing different preferences and tastes with good nutrition. She and her husband have kept a backyard garden for many years, including two thriving avocado trees, and involve the entire family in its care.