Do you know this is a question I often get asked and I know when I worked in acute hospitals, I often got asked by doctors to help patients with their meds. When a cousin recently asked me, I struggled to find a lot of information online and then when a patient asked me, I […]
Author: Valerie Gent
Are mealtimes a cause of stress in your household?
Here is my 6 step plan on how to serve it up and hopefully enjoy that family meal. We were all little once and as parents now, we serve up meals on what we know and often how we were served as children. This could be pre-plating and sitting on the couch/dinner table or Mediterranean […]
One Handed Cooks: Boosting your basics – Feeding Speech Pathology review and their “gold nuggets”!
When the One Handed Cooks team released their second book, I headed to the shops (twice) to look for their book but couldn’t find it. Then one day…. The postman delivered a special surprise for me. So why did I look so hard to find the book? Well the One handed cooks first book was […]
The power of waiting…
The greatest art is to sit and wait and let it come – Yogi Bhajan The art and power of waiting is a concept that is not new. We have heard it in many contexts and specific to Speech Pathology, waiting is a powerful tool in language programs such as Hanen that helps children with […]
Crunch and Sip… how to support your fussy eater
Crunch and sip (also called fruit break) is an Australian initiative across primary schools that encourages all children to stop for a quick 10 minute break in the morning to eat a fruit or vegetable. It can often be done during group time or roll call and even in the afternoon. If your child had […]
Are we relying too much on snack foods?
I do hate it when we demonise snack foods and make martyrs of healthy foods – food is food and all enjoyed in moderation. But here is the question I want you to ponder – are we relying on too many snack food options? Has the “moderation” pendulum swung in the opposite end? When my […]
Do you label food as GOOD? BAD? HEALTHY? UNHEALTHY? with your child.
I had a conversation with a mum today about her child who has recently started watching you tube videos and songs about food and now says “this is a healthy food”. She understandably struggled with how to guide him with food from an emotional and nutritional perspective. This is a tough one in the parenting […]
Do you have a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and fussy eating?
Do you have a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and fussy eating? Have you tried different therapy strategies with limited or no success? Here is the challenge – in order to get the best treatment in this area, we need to accurately assess the feeding difficulty. But what is it that we are actually […]
The tragedy of the device and our never-ending to-do lists.
In our every fast paced life of to-do lists and devices, there are moments in my life and moments that I see that make my heart weep. 2 months ago, I raced past this family in a café on my way to the grocery shops. I saw the child playing with his train while his […]
Meal planning – the Queen of organisational meal planning has given us her top 8 tips
Meal planning is a sanity saver especially when it comes to children with fussy eating and feeding difficulties. I often help families with meal planning (so that they can include both food that they eat and food that their kids will eat on the family table) and I thought I was pretty organised with my […]