Happy Mealtime advice from Melanie Potock SLP

The joy of a new baby makes nurturing their essential needs automatic in the first months of life.  Feedings are times to establish bonding and familiarity of love, security, joy and affection.  Meeting the needs of an infant in your arms, smiling and cuddling, sets the relationship with food for the next stage.

When your baby begins the solid food stage, the love, joy, nurturing and bonding can continue as they transition from your arms to the highchair.  Melanie Potock,  MA, CCC-SLP is a Speech Language Pathologist, SLP, with 15 years of experience working with families whose transition was not as smooth, joy turned to frustration and stress for both parent and child.   As a mother she understands the love for children and the struggles of parenting. Helping her own daughter, once a picky eater, achieve good physical health and a healthy sense of self nurturing through food.

“Learning to eat is a day to day process but family mealtimes can always be a celebration of our day and a consistent time to nurture each other.”

For more than 15 years Melanie as been working with children and families, 10 of those from her private practice, Chatter Bug, where she met families in their homes.  This allowed her to help parents in their own environment, implementing the skills learned and natural consistency and better success for each family.

“As a hospital clinician, I could improve strength and stability of the oral musculature and teach how to support the sensory system for eating, but if I didn’t also address parenting in the kitchen, some children didn’t generalize the foods that they ate in the clinic to the home and/or school cafeteria.”

She encourages modeling for children from parents and has been able to help parents relax and learn to have fun, bringing the joy they once experienced with their infant to the table. Melanie’s understanding of the need to keep mealtimes pleasant experiences for both parent and child is obvious in her book; Happy Mealtimes with Happy Kids; How to Teacher Your Child About the Joy of Food! It is the joy that is expressed in her empathetic advice for many early eating conflicts families encounter.

Happy Mealtimes with Happy Kids explores subjects from spoons to straws to the joy of messy mealtimes.

“it’s fine to play with your food if the end result is a child who is so interactive with both the food and the others at the table that he proudly tries something he has never done before.  That’s the foundation for all learning . . . experiencing something new”

Melanie gives parents permission to let go of the rules of ‘polite’ table etiquette to gain back the joy of nurturing your child through food.  She takes you through other family’s struggles, how they found their child’s needs and what was gained for everyone in the end.  The advice is both optimistic and doable, noting that it takes time and consistency, even detailing that things can get harder before they get better . . . but they will get better.

“Some of the best trial attorneys I have met are five years old”

While every child experiences mealtime differently due to possible sensory issues, distraction or previous bad experiences, Melanie knows every parent wants it to be free of stress and struggle.  If you have table battles, Melanie will have real world suggestions to try for success.   Her book is also great for parents starting the table journey with the first or their fifth.  A great gift to parents just coming out of the fog of sleep deprivation of an infant,  to arm them with a sense of adventure into the next fun part of raising a child; exploring nurturing themselves.

What did I learn? When a child sees the smile on their parents’ faces as they shove a new texture of experience into their mouths, they can’t help but be optimistic that it will be delicious!

Readers of Melanie Potock’s book, Happy Mealtimes with Happy Kids; How to Teach Your Child About the Joy of Food! Will explore these topics (from the table of contents):

1.       Proper positioning in the feeding chair

2.       Knowing which spoon to use and how to use it

3.       Messy steps to self feeding

4.       Experiencing temperature and texture before taste

5.       How children learn to tolerate change

6.       Straw drinking 101

7.       The power of waiting before cheering

8.       Distraction or reinforcement

9.       What’s in a label? How our children live up the roles we assign them

10.   Monitoring every bite will come back to bite you

11.   How to sit in a highchair without fussing

12.   Tips to stop unnecessary debates over food

13.   How to help your child tolerate tooth brushing

14.   Choking

15.   When, what and how much to feed (an age by age guideline)

All chapters are easy to read through allowing for busy parents to get just what they need for happy mealtime success.

Also read about Melanie Potock’s CD, Dancing in the Kitchen.

Watch this cute video using a Peas Operetta from Melanie’s CD

More about Melanie Potock and more feeding resources go to her website My Munch Bug