Nutrition, A Healthy Relationship with Food Podcast

Summer McMurry:

Welcome to the Carolina Pediatric Therapy Podcast. My name is Summer McMurray. I’m the Founder and CEO of Carolina Peds and I’m here this morning with Andra Sylvana. She is our registered dietician here at Carolina Peds and we’re here to talk about nutrition. So good morning Andra.

Andra Sylvana:

Good morning. Glad to be here.

Summer McMurry:

Yeah. I’m glad to have you here. So, we just started this nutrition program and I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about the program. It’s brand new and so we just started it. And it’s mostly at our Asheville Clinic but then we’re also doing some in our Hendersonville Clinic. But tell me a little bit about the program and what families this might be helpful for?

Andra Sylvana:

Yeah, so it’s really great. We have a lot flexibility with the way we’ve set up the program. So we’re able to do phone consultations, if it’s hard to get there. We can do some support hours in between, so email and phones. We can spread out the consultations a little bit, maybe try to get different developmental ages as your kid’s growing older. We also … it’s great, cause since we’re just starting out, we don’t have a wait list yet. And so, if you’ve been really trying to see someone to talk about nutrition, we can really get you in quick.

Andra Sylvana:

And there’s a lot of different reasons you might want to see someone with nutrition. Sometimes you have a picky eater and so it’s really tough at meals, and you feel like you’re having some battles. We kind of help settle things out and make sure meals are a little more enjoyable. Maybe you have a big eater in your family and you feel like you’re the food police trying to determine how much they’re eating when. We can help kind of figure out what their needs are and where they should be. Food allergies, if they’re kind of … you’ve been told your child’s allergic to milk or something that you normally have on your diet and you’re really struggling to find the alternatives, we can help you there. Or even with kids who have chronic diseases, maybe they have some tube feeds or maybe they have heart disease and we need to look at different ways that nutrition can effect that.

Summer McMurry:

Okay. Great. Yeah, that sounds like we can do a lot with nutrition.

Andra Sylvana:

Yeah.

Summer McMurry:

I think food in general is really challenging in parenting, in the parenting world, in just getting your kids to eat healthy. I have a picky eater myself at my home and so I can identify with the anxiety that comes for parents just having a hard time figuring out what to do with their kids who are picky. But nutrition is a big challenge.

Andra Sylvana:

Yeah, and you know, we can sit down and look at growth charts and say, okay, your child is growing well, or what was going on here that made the growth kind of look a little funny? We can look at a food log and see, are they really meeting their needs? Maybe they’re picky but they are meeting their needs, how do we work with that?

Summer McMurry:

Great. That’s great. Well, so we have a feeding team here at Carolina Peds and we work with children who are picky eaters and problem feeders, have difficulty with feeding and swallowing. There’s a piece of the nutrition and swallowing program in general that talks a little bit about the division of responsibility with the parent and the child. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andra Sylvana:

Sure, yeah. It was developed by a lady named Ellyn Satter, she’s a Dietician and she’s also a Child Therapist. And the idea is that you separate the responsibilities of the parent and the child, and it eases the tension at the meals. So the parents in charge of where the meals are, what is served, and when the meals are provided. And then the child gets to choose how much they eat and whether they eat. And what that does is, it takes away the pressure that parents often feel that they need to get their child to eat a certain amount, and it allows the child to tune into their inborn ability to feel when they’re hungry, feel when they’re full, when they’ve had enough. So many adults through our lives of dieting, or just busyness, we kind of lose touch with that. And so, if we can connect with that as a child, it sets them up for a really healthy relationship with food.

Summer McMurry:

Okay. That’s great. So the parents really going to walk away, really understanding how to deal with their child, nutrition, the food choices, but then also just the approach.

Andra Sylvana:

Uh-mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And trying to get the meal back to having enjoyable meals. I mean meals are really important for families and just making them a fun place to be.

Summer McMurry:

Yeah, I think, eating is part of all of our culture, as far as just the way that we share love with one another and we communicate, and we share a meal together. So I think, when that creates stress in family’s life because mealtime is not fun, then that’s the thing that we want to relieve for families.

Andra Sylvana:

Yeah.

Summer McMurry:

For sure. So we’re doing some parent education nights as well here at Carolina Pediatric Therapy and there are some topics. We do a lot of them through all of our programs with behavioral, and OT, and speech, and PT, and now nutrition as well. But tell me the nutrition related ones that are coming up on the calendar?

Andra Sylvana:

Yeah. We have a few coming up. We have one on infant feeding and that’s going to go from birth through introducing solid foods, and what are good choices, and give you some options. And we’re doing that one in conjunction with speech, so you’ll get a couple of different perspectives from us. And then we have one on raising a child with large body size. How to handle the food and also how to deal with the emotional aspects of it and we’re working with behavioral health with that one. And then our other one is picky eating, and so that one’s going to be with OT, and so we talk about different ways to introduce foods and ways to make the table more a happy place.

Summer McMurry:

Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that today. If you are interested in finding out more about our nutrition program at Carolina Peds, you can go to our website at carolinapeds.com or you can call our office at 828.398.0043. Thanks Andra for joining us today.

Andra Sylvana:

Your welcome. Thanks.