As you celebrate with loved ones, keep in mind that holiday meals are not the time to make progress in trying new foods. It is a time to maintain the skills and positive feelings about eating that have been gained in therapy. The holidays are a fun but often challenging time for picky eaters. Numerous factors can cause this stress:

• Being with unfamiliar foods

• Eating at different times, in different homes/places, and with different people than usual

• Being served food by someone who doesn’t usually fix your child’s plate

• Being around well-meaning family members who encourage and maybe push your child to eat new foods

Here are a few suggestions that may reduce the stress of eating holiday meals if your child is at a very picky stage or new to therapy and just making gains in trying foods and building confidence about eating.

1. Don’t let well-intended family members push your child about eating. He or she already has enough struggles with the challenges she feels about...

The concept of sensory processing and sensory processing disorder has rocked the pediatric world over the last few years. Many of us are left scratching our head and asking…. “What does Sensory Processing mean?” “Does my child have a disorder?” “How will therapy help my child?”

First, it helps to have a general understanding of what is meant by the term sensory processing. Basically, sensory processing refers to a person’s ability to register, attend, assign a meaning to, and respond to our basic senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. On top of processing all that incoming input, there are also internal sensations that we must respond to which detect changes in our body position or our need for nourishment and voiding of our bowel/bladder. The term sensory processing refers to this entire process. When talking about Sensory Processing Disorder, we break this process down further into what we call sensory modulation and sensory discrimination.  Sensory modulation refers to a pers...