Melanie Potock, MA, CCC-SLP is a mom who once had a picky eater. She’s experienced first-hand the stress that parents feel when they are worried about their child’s nutritional health. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find Melanie blending her knowledge of feeding therapy with practical parenting strategies that help the entire family eat healthier. She’s an international speaker and author of six books, including co-authoring the award-winning Raising a Healthy Happy Eater. Whether you’re raising a child who seems to be on the path to loving all kinds of healthy foods (and you want to keep it that way) or if your child is stuck in the chicken nugget rut, “Coach Mel” is here to guide you.
Melanie Potock
Pediatric Feeding Expert and Author
Expert Feeding Help
for Professionals and Parents
Melanie Potock’s keynotes, courses, books & articles focus on raising kids to be healthy, happy eaters. From babies to toddlers to teens, “Coach Mel” is here to help.
Raising a Healthy Happy Eater Isn’t Always Easy
Get Expert Advice on Feeding Babies, Toddlers & School Age Kids,
Including Extreme Picky Eaters
Upcoming Events & Courses
On-Demand Courses
Visit the Course Library
Live In-Person Events
Atlanta, GA on April 27, 2024
Anderson, SC on April 29, 2024
Live On-Line Courses
Food Allergies Masterclass, August 10, 2024
Appetite Masterclass, August 10, 2024
Appetite Masterclass, August 10, 2024
Babies
This book is designed to answer the most common questions about feeding babies and toddlers up to age three. It also debunks myths while offering practical tips on making mealtimes joyful and less stressful. It teaches a no-nonsense, straightforward approach to responsive feeding that’s focused on nurturing trust and communication between parent and child. Read more about Responsive Feeding here.
Toddlers & Preschoolers
In her award-winning book, Raising a Healthy Happy Eater, Melanie and her co-author, pediatrician Dr. Yum, teach parents how to guide their children on the path to adventurous eating. Parents report that toddlers are the most challenging to feed, thanks to active little bodies and fleeting attention spans. Learn how to lay positive foundations for eating at 6 months of age, navigate the “terrific twos” and avoid picky eating in the preschool years! Get the brand new, updated 2nd edition. Read more about feeding young children here.
School Age
Kids can cook right along with their parents from an early age, but it’s especially important from preschool and into the elementary school years. What’s the number one food group that parents struggle with the most? Vegetables! The secret to helping kids love any kind of food is to follow Melanie’s Three E’s: Expose, Explore, Expand. You’ll learn how to use the Three E’s and create veggie-love in Melanie’s book, Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 100 Easy Activities and Recipes. Read more about feeding school-age kids here.
More fun!
As a speech language pathologist, Melanie combined her love for language, little kids and food by writing a children’s book! You are Not an Otter: The Story of How Kids Become Adventurous Eaters is available on Kindle, in paperback, and in both English and Spanish. Don’t miss the parent tips in the back of the book! Learn about all of Mel’s books here.
🍔Listen, I love a good drive-thru & fast food occasionally, but how do you balance it all out for your kids, especially your picky eater?
👋🏼Hi, I’m Melanie, a feeding specialist & 6X author on the topic of raising healthy, happy eaters AND first and foremost, a mom of 2 very different eaters.
✨Recent research indicates what may be obvious to some…veggies & fruits NEED TO SHOW UP in your home for kids to eventually fall in love with them. BUT, what about when fast food shows up near schools, in neighborhoods and where our older kids hang out a lot? How the heck can we overcome that influence?
🥦🍇🥕Well, this study suggests that what foods you have at home as compared to your “neighborhood food environment” helps to decrease your kid’s fast food consumption. In short, keep those fruits and vegetables showing up in your kitchen. Don’t give up. It does make a difference!
❓Want to help your younger kids fall in love with veggies NOW? Comment #books and I’ll send you the link to all my books, including Adventures in Veggieland: Help your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables with 100 Easy and Fun Activities & Recipes! 🥑🍅🥦Thanks to you – my publisher has agreed to release it in paperback with all the same colorful photos but at a much lower price than the previous format!
🥰Melanie
#MelaniePotock #pickyeaters #slpfeeding #otfeeding #responsivefeeding
➡️Saira Sarwar et al, Associations Between Adolescent Food Environments and Dietary Intake, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jneb.2024.09.001
✨Helping kids with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) requires specialized knowledge on pediatric anxiety and feeding development.
✨I have 12 seats left in my ARFID virtual Masterclass in January. Next class will be in late summer/early fall 2025.
Comment ARFID (please check your spelling 😘) to get the direct link flown right to your inbox!
Questions? Drop them in the comments!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #arfidawareness #ashaigers #extremepickyeating #slpfeedingtherapy #otfeedingtherapy
Influencer Fail.🤦🏼♀️🤣
How’s your day going?🙂
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #slpfeeding #feedingtherapy #pickyeaters #ashaigers #feedinglittles #responsivefeeding
🥣When toddlers refused to use a spoon, it can be for a variety of reasons.
👋🏼Hi, I’m Melanie , here to help you start your baby on solids and raise a healthy, happy eater!
✨Unless baby is having difficulty with fine motor development , refusing to use a spoon is often a wonderful sign of a baby who loves to get messy! That’s so important for their sensory system, and it plays a huge part in raising an adventurous eater.
🥄But at some point utensils need to be a thing! Follow the steps in this video, keeping in mind that you may not be able to reintroduce the bowl for as long as a week!
✨Once baby can take the spoon from your hand and return it to you on a consistent basis , you can start to leave the spoon in the bowl with just a tiny bit of yogurt or purée. Then gradually overtime you can begin to fill the bowl a little bit more.
🫶🏼I hope this is helpful! Thanks for sharing it with your friends too!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #feedingtherapy #slpfeeding #pickyeaters #ashaigers #feedinglittles #responsivefeeding
🤔If you’re picky eater just doesn’t seem to have an appetite, consider that there are 2 types of appetite they need to experience to become more adventurous eaters.
👋🏼Hi, I’m Melanie, a pediatric feeding specialist here to help you raise healthy, happy eaters!
🫶🏼🍪🫶🏼Hedonic appetite means food is pleasurable, and we sometimes eat just for the pleasure of it. I can’t resist a warm, chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, can you? Doesn’t matter if I am “full” or not…I want it because I enjoy it! Even if you kid only eats 4 “safe” foods, they may not have much joy for those foods…it can get pretty boring! That lack of hedonic appetite makes trying new foods more difficult.
😋Homeostatic appetite means we feel hunger and ideally, we fill our bellies due to that feeling. But many kids don’t have a strong hunger drive or homeostatic appetite. That might be because they tend to graze all day, or because there are medical issues like “slow stomach emptying” getting in the way of feeling hunger.
👉🏼The first steps are typically a GI evaluation to determine medical issues or to see if an appetite stimulant might help. But any child on an appetite stimulant ideally should be in feeding therapy too…it’s not just about appetite most of the time, in my professional opinion.
🤍Hope this was helpful – and hey, thanks for following me! Please ask your friends to follow along too, it would be mean a lot to me to have them join us here!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #slpfeeding #feedingtherapy #pickyeaters #slpfeeding
🥕🌽🥦Back by popular demand, Adventures in Veggieland is being released in paperback!
😤in 2020, The Grinch stopped the presses on one of my most popular books among parents and feeding therapists…but he’s not going to get away with it!
🌟It’s back in a new paperback format and a lower-price than ever before!
📗It’s time! Comments #books for links to pre-order with a price guarantee for release early 2025!
❓Do you already have a copy? Tell me in the comments too!
🥳Eek! So excited!
🤍Melanie
#melaniepotock #slpfeeding #feedingtherapy #adventuresinveggieland #otfeeding #pickyeaters
🤍It’s no secret that I’m a serious fan of @lovevery play kits!
👉🏼Comment Lovevery for a direct link sent to your inbox so you can explore OVER 20 Play Kits!🙌🏼#affiliatelink
💕Melanie
#melaniepotock #loveverygift #lovevery
My phone garage strategy makes “parking the phone” till dinner is over so much fun!📱🚗🙌🏼
👋🏼Hi, I’m Melanie, and I’m here to help your growing family get back to happier family mealtimes! If you’d like to learn about feeding babies, toddlers and bigger kids, I hope you’ll follow me!
🏰You and your kiddo can make a garage, a castle, a fort, or whatever your child’s heart desires with a simple box, scissors and craft materials to customize it. Help your child cut doors into the box that lift up (like a flap) for any screens or phones to have a resting place till dinner is over.
👩📲👧Kids can be in charge of making sure EVERYONE in the family parks their electronics before sitting down together. Kids love to remind parents of house rules, so occasionally take your phone to the table 😉so they can say “Mom, park your phone please”. That reinforces the idea that this is a family rule and we don’t need electronics at the table.
⏰Some kids may need shorter mealtimes at first to learn to adjust to the new family rule of “no screens at the table”, and that’s ok. Give it three days of consistency and they’ll often make the adjustment quickly!
🚀DM me a photo of your screen garage – or phone castle – or ipad rocket ship! Can’t wait to see what your kids make!
📌💕Like this idea? Save it! Thanks for sharing and tagging friends!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock
#feedingtherapy #originalidea #slpfeeding
👎🏼I’m not a fan of starting baby with bland, infant cereals. When babies first start solids, research shows that’s the time to take advantage of the “flavor window” when babies are readily accepting all kinds of flavors and textures! But…
💪🏼Babies also need iron at this stage. It’s crucial. A box of infant cereal is an easy way to shake a little bit here and there & add iron to:
✨ pancakes & waffles
✨ pasta sauce
✨ spreads like avocado & nut butters
🙌🏼Bonus Tip: Skip the rice cereal - it’s higher in arsenic than other baby cereals.
👉🏼You’ll find more tips like these in my latest book, Responsive Feeding 🤍 Comment #BOOKS for a direct link to all of my books. Let me know if you have any questions!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #slpfeeding #feedingtherapy #ashaigers #pickyeaters #feedinglittles #responsivefeeding
🤦🏼♀️Got a picky an eater who just doesn’t want to eat vegetables?
🥕🥬🥗🫛The place to start is to eat yours, a lot. And, put a tiny bit on their plate too.
✨There’s a bazillion other things that we can do (OK maybe not that many) but that is where you start! You’re doing great!
🥰Melanie
#melaniepotock #slpfeeding #feedingtherapy #asha2024 #pickyeaters
✨🙏🏻✨To be honored by The American Speech Language Hearing Association for my volunteer work with @picky_eater_partners and @doctoryumproject … wow. What an experience!
✨Beyond grateful to be nominated by @csha.co 🤍 and to spend the evening with these incredible researchers & clinicians at the ASHFoundation Awards Ceremony.
🤔A friend asked me this at dinner last night: “What do you want to be your legacy?” That hit me hard. I thought for a beat and said…
“I just want people to remember that I was a helper.”🤍
🙏🏻Thank you for following me and letting me share with you something that means a lot to my heart and soul…the absolute honor to help kids find joy in food.
🥰Melanie
#MelaniePotock #pickyeaterpartners #doctoryumproject #coloradoslp
Pediatric Feeding Expert and Author
Melanie's Advice Shared In...
Courses for Parents & Professionals
Melanie offers both on-demand courses and live-streaming Masterclasses. CEUs are optional for both OTs and SLPs, yet audience members include parents, RDs, pediatricians & other health care professionals.
Need help with a picky eater, or just want to prevent kids from falling into the chicken-nugget rut? As a parent, SLP or OT, what do you need to know about child nutrition? What about the anxious eater – Could this be more than just picky eating? Melanie’s on-demand course subscriptions provide the answers!
Want more in-depth instruction in a small group, virtual setting? Register for one of Melanie’s Masterclass!
Explore course options here.
Parenting Advice
Melanie’s advice has been shared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Parents Magazine and more. Over 150 articles for both parents and professionals are found here or contact Melanie for a personal one-hour coaching session via video chat.
Masterclass participants get a 25% discount on coaching.
Learn more about professional and parent coaching here.
Keynote Speaking
An international speaker, award-winning author and pediatric feeding specialist, audiences find Melanie’s advice to be practical and possible, even in the most challenging cases. That’s because Melanie is in the trenches, working closely with the most extreme picky eaters and supporting families and health professionals around the world. Melanie has been invited to speak at over 100 different events, including the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s National Conference and the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo.
Audiences say it best: If you are looking for a professional speaker who can “provide practical solutions” for parents, caregivers and therapists and your company needs a “highly knowledgeable, organized presenter” with “energy and enthusiasm” who can deliver a “dynamic course”, then your best choice is Melanie Potock. Contact Melanie here.
Product Consulting
Need expert input on your new parenting product? Melanie has provided expert advice for Orgain, Inc., Holland Health Care, Inc., Healthy Height, Inc., NumNum, LLC and numerous health care and parent product companies.
Looking for an expert to educate your team on how children learn to become adventurous eaters, baby-self feeding or the importance of purees? Feeding is developmental, just like learning to crawl, walk, run. At least 1 in 4 typically developing children have trouble learning to eat! Raising a healthy, happy eater requires the right tools and the right advice. Melanie provides company education and collaboration via webinars, social media and creating educational videos for your audience.
Contact Melanie here.
Blog
feeding advice for parents and professionals
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A Special Needs Guide for Learning to Eat with Your SEVEN Senses – Part One
Most of us think of five senses and the human body: Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. But, when it comes...Read More
3 Ways to Explain Baby-Led Feeding to Your Extended Family
By Melanie Potock, MA, CCC-SLP Whether it’s a holiday dinner, a virtual family brunch or an outdoor family picnic, well-meaning relatives may...Read More
Planting for Kids
By The Lettuce Grow Team Melanie Potock has a knack for taking eaters of all ages from picky to passionate. Here are a...Read More
