Roasted Butternut Squash with Mixed Salad Greens and Homemade Dressing Recipe

Feeding Therapy, Feeding Toddlers to School Age

Roasted Butternut Squash with Mixed Salad Greens and Homemade Dressing Recipe

The first time you introduce your child to salad, offer the greens and other mix-ins separately for the child to try.

By Melanie Potock

Adventures in Veggieland: Help Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables―with 100 Easy Activities and Recipes (The Experiment, 2018), by Melanie Potock, is a wonderful guide to get kids involved in the kitchen. Potock provides many useful ways to get kids prepping and playing with the veggies they prepare. By exploring the veggies before they eat, kids may be less apt to turn their noses at what they prepared.

Get the recipe on Mother Earth Living >>

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Sep 12

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🐑If you don’t like trekking by sheep, old English manors, ancient churches, babbling brooks and English rose gardens…probably you should stay home.😉 The Cotswolds - where every cottage has a name.🏡

❤️Drop your questions in the comments! I’d love to tell you how to visit The Cotswolds!

Melanie 🥰 ...

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Sep 10

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A play kitchen at 11 months? Absolutely. 🍳

And two years later, that same kitchen can inspire a whole new level of
play. I’d buy every little kid a play kitchen, if I could!

As a speech, language & feeding therapist, play kitchens are one of my
FAVORITE toys because they grow right along with your child.

They can support:
🍓 language & new vocabulary
🥄 pretend & imaginative play
👩‍🍳 imitation & social skills
🥕 early exposure to food concepts
💬 back-and-forth communication

The play changes as your child develops, and that’s exactly what makes a
great play kitchen worth having for years.

Want to see my favorites?

Comment KITCHEN and I’ll send you my favorite play kitchens!

Melanie ❤️

Melanie Potock, play kitchen, language development, speech
therapy, feeding therapy, pretend play, toddler activities, baby
development, food play ...

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Sep 9

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If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s okay to ask a therapist, “What makes you different?” — please ask.

This story isn’t really about me.
It’s about a dad who had watched his daughter go to feeding therapy twice a week for an entire year. She had received early intervention services, too. She had recently been diagnosed with autism.
And still, she still barely ate any new foods.

So when I showed up at their home as yet another feeding therapist, he didn’t need to make me feel comfortable.
He needed to know:
❤️ Do you understand what we’ve already been through?
❤️ Have you really listened to what has and hasn’t worked?
❤️ Do you understand MY child, not just her diagnosis?
❤️ What will you be looking at that perhaps hasn’t been considered before?
❤️ What are we going to do differently this time?
👉🏻👉🏻And maybe most importantly…
Why should I ask my child and my family to invest our time, energy, money and trust in therapy again?

Parents, you have every right to ask those questions.
✔️Ask about the therapist’s experience.
✔️Ask how they approach children like yours.
✔️Ask what they’ll do if the first approach isn’t working.
✔️Ask how they’ll include YOU in understanding the why behind your child’s feeding challenges.
✔️And ask, “What makes you different?”
A good professional shouldn’t be offended by thoughtful questions. We should understand what’s underneath them.

Because sometimes “What makes you different?” really means:
“We’ve tried so hard. Please give me a reason to hope this might actually help my child.”

That’s a question worth listening to.
❤️Melanie

Melanie Potock, feeding therapy, feeding therapist, pediatric feeding disorder, picky eating, autism and feeding, feeding challenges, parent advocacy, responsive feeding ...

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