Resources for Feeding Children ~ Balls and Balloons

This page may contain affiliate links for your convenience, which helps to support the work here at Balls and Balloons. However, if I wouldn’t recommend these resources for feeding children to my mom and my best friend, I won’t recommend it here, either!

I know, from experience, that if your child has feeding challenges, it is difficult to know where to turn for help. This is true regardless of whether your child is a picky eater or a problem feeder, whether your child has oral motor delays or strong sensory preferences, and whether it is obvious what has caused the feeding challenges or whether it is still a mystery.

Here are a few of my favorite resources, books, websites and other information that have helped us on our feeding journey.

Books

Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating: A Step-by-Step Guide for Overcoming Selective Eating, Food Aversion, and Feeding Disorders

Why I love it: This is, without a doubt, my favorite book to reference for feeding challenges of any kind. It is co-written by a family doctor and a speech pathologist, both of whom specialize in feeding, so they really do know their subject. Their plan applies to any child, from the mildly picky to the most extreme problem feeder.

The program they advocate for truly does make mealtimes more pleasant for everybody in a child-friendly way. As a result, is a great way to help reduce anxiety in a problem feeder. We have been using this method at home well over a year, and when we follow it closely, it is absolutely my favorite way to feed children.

One caveat of this book: If you have a problem feeder that doesn’t feel hunger correctly (like our E), or if your child has WAGR with a BDNF deletion and therefore does not feel fullness correctly, you may have to be cautious regarding letting them have full control over how much they eat. However, please note that only 4-6% of the pediatric population or less generally falls into that category, so in 94-96% of children, this approach should work fine!

Raising a Happy, Healthy Eater

Why I love it: This book should be required reading for all new parents of children. I love how it goes through the feeding stages that each child goes through at different ages. It also addresses issues that can come up, and how to deal with those issues. It advocates a similar feeding style as the book above, albeit with some slight differences.

This also includes a chapter dedicated simply to explaining what to do if your child requires feeding therapy. So while it is not targeted strictly to parents with problem feeders, it definitely can be helpful to them.

Websites

Your Kid’s Table

Alisha, who runs the website Your Kid’s Table, is an OT who specializes in feeding and sensory processing. She’s also a mom who has dealt with significant picky eating in her own home with her own children. Her website is the most straightforward, helpful, practical website related to feeding that I’ve found. She follows a similar philosophy to the books listed above. If you’re struggling with a picky eater, reading anything Alisha has written likely will help!

The Ellyn Satter Institute

“Ellyn Satter has devoted her long career to uplifting the mealtime experience. She teaches parents how to transform family meals into joyful, healthful, struggle-free events, free from drama and conflict. She teaches individuals with weight issues how to release themselves from the grip of guilt and shame in their relationship with food. She has developed simple yet profound models for feeding your family and feeding yourself, validated them through research, and passed along her approaches to healthcare professionals and educators around the world. This website is evidence of her commitment to helping other incorporate the Satter principles into their practice and teaching. Ellyn Satter’s transformative work changes lives.”

The above is the description taken straight from the Ellyn Satter Institute’s website. Ellyn Satter is the individual who pioneered the Division of Responsibility (sDOR) philosophy of feeding. The books and websites listed above are all based off of her philosophy. I sincerely wish I had seen her website and these books much earlier on in E’s life, because I wonder if some of the issues we have now could have been avoided!

Resources

Please note: I am not a doctor, feeding therapist or medical professional of any sort; I am simply a mom with an internet connection sharing what I’ve learned on our feeding journey. None of the recommendations below should be considered medical advice, particularly if your child has dysphagia. Always consult the appropriate medical professionals if you are concerned about your child’s feeding!

Straw Cups

These Honey Bear Straw Cups were my favorite cups to use to teach a child to drink from a straw. You can easily squeeze the liquid into the child’s mouth so that they can get the idea of a straw. These are particularly wonderful for children with dysphagia, low oral muscle tone, or anybody who is struggling to learn to drink from a straw.

The cups have a lid you can close, so it’s easy to take drinks along for your child when you go somewhere. They also have a wide enough mouth that it’s easy to get them clean and keep them clean in the dishwasher. We used refrigerator tubing to cut replacement straws; however, you could also use plastic disposable straws or simply clean the straws per their instructions. We tried many, many different types of cups with E, and this one was by far my favorite!

Once your child has mastered drinking from a straw, these Take and Toss cups are the best. I love them because a) they are inexpensive, b) they are easy to clean, and c) I don’t feel bad if I need to toss/recycle one and get more!

Unlike most commercially available straw cups, they do not have a valve, which makes it much easier for a child to drink from them – especially a child who may struggle with drinking. Of course, that means they aren’t completely spill-proof, but they are still spill resistant.

Plates & Bowls

Suction bowls are wonderful for little ones just learning how to eat. Although messy feeding and exploring food is encouraged in feeding therapy, it is nice to avoid having an entire bowl of something like vegetable soup thrown on the floor!

It is possible for a toddler to get the suction to release and still throw the food on the floor, of course, but by the time my son could consistently do that, he was old enough to know not to do so!

Divided plates are a wonderful thing for any child, but if you have a picky eater or problem feeder, they are a must! They also make life a whole lot easier for a low vision child, since the food doesn’t move around the plate, making it easier for the child to find.

When E was experimenting with finger foods as an infant, our OT recommended that we use a black background for her food to create the best visual contrast possible for her to see the food.

As such, if you have a low vision child, I’d recommend getting these Re-Play brand divided plates, since you can order a set in black! My recommendation would be to get one set in black and another set in white, so any foods served have the best contrast possible for the child to see.

In the interest of full disclosure, please note that I actually have not used these specific plates. The ones we did use are no longer available. However, they have everything you would want – deep sides to make it easier for the child to self-feed, easily stackable, dishwasher safe, microwave safe, and colors for you to choose!

This brand also has bowls, cups, and utensils, so if the black and white contrast helps your child, you could easily have an entire set for them.

If your child doesn’t need quite as much contrast, or if you want something less expensive, then these IKEA plates, bowls and cups are wonderful. They have high sides to make self feeding easier, they tolerate abuse quite well, and will last until your kids are grown. They still provide more contrast than most cutesy patterned kids plates, and they stack well for storage. My kids love to use these plates, and thankfully, they’re old enough that they’ve stopped arguing about which color I give them!

Utensils

For spoon feeding: The feeding clinic we attended when E was almost two recommended that we use these Nuby hot-safe spoons for all of E’s spoon feeding. They said they are the best for feeding infants and toddlers, because they have soft tips, shallow spoon beds, and handle small quantities, which are all essential for problem feeders. We used them, quite literally, for YEARS, and never had to replace them or throw them away, so they are extremely durable.

These only provide a small amount of color contrast; however, we gave both a verbal cue and a physical cue that a bite was coming, so she was prepared for the bite even if she couldn’t see it terribly well. So the color was less of an issue for this than it could be for self-feeding.

For self-feeding: I looked for a LONG time, and I simply cannot find my favorite spoons for self-feeding. They don’t seem to exist anymore! These spoons with a loop handle are as close as I could find. The key is a shorter handle, and a looped handle is easier for them to hold while developing their fine motor skills. I also liked the deeper spoon bed for self-feeding, since it makes it more likely that some of the food will actually make it to the child’s mouth.

Information

The following links bring you to information that I’ve found most helpful in our feeding journey. I hope to talk about each of these concepts in future posts, but until that time, please see these links: