S3E4 How to Raise Happy & Healthy Eaters in Our Chicken Nugget World with Melanie Potock

12/02/15 • 36 min

In today's episode, we discuss feeding specialists and many practical ways to deal with picky eating in children.

Have you been told by your pediatrician that “all kids go through picky eating states?” Or perhaps you’ve been waiting for your child to outgrow picky eating because you’ve been reassured that it’s normal and just a phase?

If you’ve had a picky eater or are currently trying to help your picky eater be more adventurous with foods, you are going to love this podcast.

Some of the things we talk about in today’s podcast:

What does a feeding specialist do and what makes someone a specialist?
How do I know if I need to see a feeding specialist?
Why do kids become picky eaters?
Won’t they just grow out of it? (answer is no, and we’ll explain why)
How can parents avoid the picky eater trap?
Feeding is a developmental skill, like learning to crawl, walk, run.
Don’t all kids just learn how to eat naturally?
What are some of the key principles of happy “Parenting in the Kitchen?”
The one piece of advice to keep our kids on the path to adventurous eating, what would it be?

Our guest, Melanie Potock, MA, CCC-SLP, treats children birth to teens who have difficulty eating. She is the co-author of Parenting in the Kitchen: How to Raise Happy and Healthy Eaters in Our Chicken Nugget World, the author of Happy Mealtimes with Happy Kids and the producer of the award-winning kids’ CD Dancing in the Kitchen: Songs that Celebrate the Joy of Food! She is an international speaker and media expert on feeding and has contributed content to Huffington Post, Parents Magazine, Natural Baby, special needs publications and more.

Melanie’s websites: MyMunchBug.com and ParentingInTheKitchen.com are the go-to resources for parents wanting to raise adventurous eaters, even in our chicken-nugget world.

Her Books:

In today's episode, we discuss feeding specialists and many practical ways to deal with picky eating in children.

If you’ve had a picky eater or are currently trying to help your picky eater be more adventurous with foods, you are going to love this podcast.

Some of the things we talk about in today’s podcast:

What does a feeding specialist do and what makes someone a specialist?
How do I know if I need to see a feeding specialist?
Why do kids become picky eaters?
Won’t they just grow out of it? (answer is no, and we’ll explain why)
How can parents avoid the picky eater trap?
Feeding is a developmental skill, like learning to crawl, walk, run.
Don’t all kids just learn how to eat naturally?
What are some of the key principles of happy “Parenting in the Kitchen?”
The one piece of advice to keep our kids on the path to adventurous eating, what would it be?

Melanie’s websites: MyMunchBug.com and ParentingInTheKitchen.com are the go-to resources for parents wanting to raise adventurous eaters, even in our chicken-nugget world.

Her Books:

Previous Episode

S3E3 How to Be Prepared for the Holidays and Avoid Overwhelm

With Thanksgiving and the Holiday season approaching, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of planning, cooking, shopping, and entertaining that is about to happen.

In this episode, Laura shares her best tips for meal planning and simple entertaining and how to put your kitchen to work! Whether you are hosting Thanksgiving and the Holidays or heading over to your family’s house to celebrate, you’ll enjoy Laura’s take on keeping things simple and fun.

Laura also shares how she spends the Holiday season with her family in this personal conversation.

Her Thanksgiving Meal Plan can be found here.

Next Episode

S3E5 Feeding Kids a Healthy Diet with Dr. Orlena Kerek

In today's episode, we discuss practical ways to get kids to actually eat their vegetables. Dr. Orlena has done lots of research to find the best ways to help kids be open to trying more veggies and she's sharing lots of practical ideas with us that she's learned through the years as a mom and a doctor.

Dr. Orleana Kerek is a pediatric doctor from the UK. She has four kids ages 7, 5, and two 3 year old twins.

When she was working as a doctor in the UK (before I had kids of her own) she would see so many kids who ate a poor diet. Most of them had constipation.

She used to do the “chip test and ask what their favorite vegetable was and if they answered “chips”; she was pretty sure that they didn’t eat enough vegetables. She used to think “I won’t have a child like that, mine will eat everything and be really healthy.” But as you can all imagine, parenthood changes everything.

Once she had kids she realized that it wasn’t so easy. She’d make healthy meals and lots of vegetables and she would see uneaten plates.

This led to her research on how to actually get kids to eat vegetables and has written a book on this very subject. I love the title, it’s called “Crunch: put a stop to picky eating and help your kids love veggies!”

She also offers a lot of resources on her personal website, snotty noses.com.

Connect with Dr. Orlena Kerek on her website.

Check out her book: Crunch: Put a Stop to Picky Eating and Help your Kids Love Vegetables