Marsha Dunn Klein (0s):

Another reason that children are motivated to eat. So the smell, the texture, the taste, the enjoyment, but also babies want to eat in response to social interactions. Curiosity is a huge motivator.

Katie Ferraro (15s):

Hey, there I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning here on the baby led weaning made easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Well, hello guys. Welcome back. I am so excited to have Marsha Dunn Klein on the podcast. Again today. There's so many topics that I always, every time I be with Marsha, I end up making more work for her. I feel like because then we think of extra or additional podcast episode topics.

Katie Ferraro (57s):

So this one born out of our last interview. Marsha did interview with us called sensory one-on-one and she's teaching all about sensory experience for learning how to eat. You guys loved it. It's one of the most downloaded episodes we have at that time. She's like we really should do an episode on like helping parents stay in their lane and defining what our roles are in infant feeding. So today's episode is kind of born out of that idea what our parent and Baby Roles in Infant Feeding with Marsha Dunn clients take on it. So if you're not familiar with Marsha, she is an occupational therapist specializing in pediatrics, specializing in working with kids who have in particular feeding challenges. She's done this for over 50 years. Marsha co-authored the first book on pediatric feeding called pre feeding skills.

Katie Ferraro (1m 40s):

Her latest book is anxious eaters, anxious, mealtimes, practical, and compassionate strategies for mealtime peace in 2021 Marsha and some of her other credentialed feeding colleagues that started the get permission Institute, an online education platform, providing feeding courses for professionals based on the principles of Marcia's get permission approach. So we had a great conversation kind of about giving credit where credit is due and so much of what other feeding therapists learned and what we even learn as parents in the Feeding world. A lot of it's actually attributable to Marsha. So I'm going to highlight some of those in this interview because I think it is important. We sometimes hear these terms, for example, positive tilt that's Marcia's term.

Katie Ferraro (2m 22s):

She teaches that in the get permission Institute. And she's going to tell you guys a little bit about what a positive tilt is in today's episode. So if you've ever been like, Hm, I wonder if I'm like stepping out of my lane with his baby feeding thing, or you're not really sure if you're doing your job. And I know we sometimes question if we're doing it well, you guys are doing a fabulous job, but it doesn't hurt to hear from someone who works with families in feeding therapy and feeding challenges to understand, okay, when things go wrong, what goes wrong? And then maybe what can we do ahead of that to prevent it? So that's the gist of today's interview. It's called Stay in Your Lane, parent and Baby Roles in Infant Feeding with Marsha Dunn Klein.

Marsha Dunn Klein (2m 60s):

Nice to be here.

Katie Ferraro (3m 1s):

All right, last time you were here, we were chatting all about sensory issues related to feeding. So I don't know if you remember, but that episode was called sensory 101. What motivates babies to eat with Marsha Dunn Klein, one of our most downloaded interview. So Marsha parents love that topic. They love the way you teach. We're going to talk about their roles and Baby Roles in Infant Feeding. But before we get started, could you give us a little background and share what you do for our audience who may not yet be familiar with your work?

Marsha Dunn Klein (3m 29s):

I love the word yet. The whole world is filled with things we haven't yet done. We haven't yet eaten or we haven't yet known about. So I'm a pediatric occupational therapist. I've been working with children with feeding challenges for over 50 years. Now it's a passion and my life's work. I've written books and I've invented feeders and spoons. And I lecture around the world when the world is open. And currently Katie I've been trying to record a lot of the information that I teach in my get permission approach and the get permission Institute, which is an online platform for teaching. So I'm trying to kind of collect information in a place where people can find it.

Marsha Dunn Klein (4m 9s):

So those are some of the things that I've been doing lately. But as you said, I just love teaching about this topic. I love feeding babies and helping parents figure out how to help their babies enjoy mealtimes.

Katie Ferraro (4m 20s):

And you're amazing that you've been doing this for over 50 years and yet you guys, she just told me that she got done teaching this three day course for professionals in Australia. It was like probably some weird time. You're like a machine you never stop. You're always giving. And I'm so grateful that you share your time and your talents with our audience. Because I think historically, like for example, I looked here the pre feeding skills book, do you know, what's like 150 bucks on Amazon. And like, this is not stuff that's really like accessible to parents. And yet now I think with podcasts and social media, like it used to just be feeding professionals who got to learn from Marsha Dunn Klein, but now parents get to as well. And of course the feeding professionals are still very important, but I appreciate that you speak directly to parents as well.

Marsha Dunn Klein (4m 60s):

And I have been learning since COVID I've Katie, I've been learning lots more about zoom teaching and online support of families. And so it's much easier to be in people's homes and answer people's questions. So

Katie Ferraro (5m 12s):

In their earbuds today, so we're in their ears and you teach a lot about respect in the Feeding relationship. And I would guess that would have something to do with knowing your role or your job as it does in any relationship. So what are the roles or jobs that both parents and babies should fulfill during this period when the baby is transitioning to solid foods and learning how to eat?

Marsha Dunn Klein (5m 34s):

Oh, what a great question. So one of the things ways you could think about this is that we adults and babies each have roles in this relationship. It's a partnership in feeding with the baby and the parent, and we each have roles. And in a way we need to stay in our own lane. You know, in a way we need to know what's our job and what's the baby's job, because if we get into their face and do their job, or if they're trying to do the parents' job, it can go wrong. And, you know, Katie, I've worked with so many babies through the years that have breathing problems and heart problems and feeding tubes and all kinds of physical or sensory reasons why they're not eating.

Marsha Dunn Klein (6m 15s):

But also they're very typically developing Babies can have kind of a mismatch of interaction with their parents when they're learning about foods. And so we're trying so hard to help parents really know their roles in baby's roles. So for example, if we think about it, the American academy of pediatrics gives us a lot of support for the idea that the parents provide the food and the children decides the children decide what they want to eat, and they get permission approach. We use the terminology, it's the parent adult job to offer. And that's inherent in the word offer is a choice. And the baby says, yes, I want that.

Marsha Dunn Klein (6m 57s):

Or no, I don't. So the parent offers the child decides of all the things you offered. What do I want to eat? Some of this is really reflected in Ellyn satter's division of responsibility, where she talks about adults, decide the menu, the where, and the one of mealtimes as parents. It is important for us to decide the win of meal times because we want to give babies food and then a break and then food, and then a break, because we want to give them the privilege of being hungry at a meal. Because when you're hungry, you're a little more likely to try some new things and really have a good meal. I do take this role of it's the adult job to determine the menu very seriously. And that's not going to look the same for every child every time I'm not going to decide the meal and say, we're having crab legs tonight, take it or leave it.

Marsha Dunn Klein (7m 45s):

I'm going to be careful that whatever it is I'm offering is developmentally appropriate for that baby. For that child's developmental age for that child, you know, I happen to work with a lot of really picky eaters. So sometimes we need to adapt what we're offering children because of their severe pickiness for those children are only five foods. So I take the role of adult job to offer very seriously because our offering needs some knowledge behind it. And that's what I love Katie about your a hundred FIRST FOODS, because you are giving parents the ideas of what kind of things are developmentally appropriate to offer.

Marsha Dunn Klein (8m 25s):

Now it's the child's job, the baby's job in feeding to let us know this food works for me. And it doesn't. This is a food that I like and I want, and how they tell us they want it is by reaching for it, by leaning into it, by opening their mouth. If somebody is offering an initial taste on a spoon, you know, I know that we don't have lots of spoons in a baby led weaning, but you have a little, a little chapter where you give kids a few days of, of interacting with a spoon where the parents offer and the child says they're ready or not. And how do they do that? They open their mouth. This is not a demand. When we offer it is not a demand. It is a, an offer which inherent in it is a choice.

Marsha Dunn Klein (9m 8s):

So not every baby. When we first offered them some interesting little foods, they might not just jump into those foods the first day or two, they might pick it up, play with it, smell it and do the things babies do. When they're motivated to try new food. They're motivated to try because they're hungry. They're motivated to try because they might like the smell. They might like the texture. They might bring it towards their mouth. And like some flavor, those motivating factors allow children to enjoy their experience with food and building on positive experiences. Babies learn to eat.

Katie Ferraro (9m 45s):

You mentioned hunger two times, and I completely agree with you. I love the language that you use about giving a child the privilege of being hungry, but I don't want parents at six and seven months of age to expect for their baby to eat in response to, or to alleviate hunger because milk is still providing the majority of their nutrition while they're learning how to eat. So maybe we could just break it down. That it's a little bit later in the self-feeding process, where baby is now. And I call it casual hunger, but being allowed to experience some casual hunger, we don't want you to starving your baby out at six months and then expecting them to magically know how to food, make that feeling go away. Cause then they start freaking out and then there's choking risk.

Katie Ferraro (10m 26s):

Like it gets ugly fast. So I know that you're kind of speaking for the whole spectrum. I just am thinking of the six and seven month old moms are like, oh my gosh, my baby's not eating a response to hunger.

Marsha Dunn Klein (10m 35s):

Such a good point. Yes, Katie, when I think about hunger, I think about it as the baby is evolving into participating at meal times later on, you know, closer towards a year, you begin seeing a lot more sort of, Hey, I'm grumpy cause I'm hungry kind of responses. So I agree with you completely. Another reason that children are motivated to eat. So the smell, the texture, the taste, the enjoyment, but also babies want to eat in response to social interactions. They see parents eating, they see their siblings eating, they see food on a tray in front of them and it looks kind of interesting. Curiosity is a huge motivator.

Marsha Dunn Klein (11m 16s):

So thanks for keeping me honest on that one because yes, we're not trying to starve kids into trying new foods in your a hundred FIRST FOODS. Absolutely not because those babies are going to start out by eating because of interest, curiosity, but we want the motivation for their eating. We want it to be internal.

Katie Ferraro (11m 34s):

And we did this fabulous interview. I mean the interview, it was not fabulous. I was doing it, but the interview, he was fabulous. And we interviewed Rosanne Meyer. Who's a PhD dietitian who specializes in growth. And we were doing the whole episode on catch-up growth and how unfortunately many physicians will tell parents, they need to start solid foods early to help with catch-up growth. And not only is that a wildly inappropriate recommendation, it's physically impossible for a child who is not physiologically, ready to eat yet, or know how to eat, to use quote-unquote calories and energy from food to fuel growth. Like you can't expect a baby to use food, to fuel extra growth when they don't know how to use food. And that's why I love your approaches because you always are meeting the baby where they're at developmentally.

Katie Ferraro (12m 18s):

They can't eat enough. Quote, unquote, meet to meat all their ironies, but that's okay because they're still have milk as this kind of insurance policy in this learning to eat processed. So I think we need to keep remembering this is a continuum we don't flip a switch at baby knows how to eat overnight. And you're always reminding us of that for which I am thankful.

Marsha Dunn Klein (12m 38s):

When I think about one of the roles, parent vs children, it is the child's job to eat as much as they can when they're ready and we follow their pace, right? So that's why we're offering different foods. And they show us that this one's working and I love this one and I'm going to eat more of this and less of that. They make those decisions and it's coming from them. That is the most amazing way to help children develop internal motivation to eat. They're eating because it's motivating to them. For some reason that we've talked about they're eating because over time they're going to be eating because they're filling up on it. And it's meaningful to them to relating to their hunger, you know, over the next six and eight months, you're going to see more of that.

Marsha Dunn Klein (13m 21s):

And they're learning. I can stop when I need to stop. And nobody's going to make me what happens when we get confused about our roles. Katie is when we ups decide, I've determined, you're going to eat this amount. And this many things that's getting out of our lanes. And when pediatricians, well-meaning say, I want this child to catch up in their growth. What that tells us parents who love our children so much, it tells us parents, I better try harder to get food in. And it's actually not our job to get food in. It's our job to offer and let them take in what they can, what they're able to and what they enjoy. So when meal time starts to be externally motivated, meaning I'm the grownup and I'm going to get seven more bites in you.

Marsha Dunn Klein (14m 5s):

And I'm going to get you to finish this jar of baby food. And I'm going to get you to eat this much. When that mismatch happens, we're telling the child, Hey, it doesn't matter what you think. Hey, don't pay attention to your body and how much you want to eat. Hey, I get to veto that cause I'm the grownup. And that's where the mismatch happens. We many of us, adults, Katie, you know, some of us, even though we're not hungry or eat more than we want, and we're not great at listening to our own bodies. Many people who have over and underway problems as adults will describe being forced to eat things they didn't want to or more than they could when they were growing up. And so if we constantly, as adults are saying, eat more, eat less or differently than you are capable of.

Marsha Dunn Klein (14m 50s):

Then we're telling them to their body. And that's a disservice.

Katie Ferraro (14m 54s):

I think it is for a lot of parents. If they grew up in that environment where they were told to eat X or Y or Z amount, or even to this day, we have pediatricians or sometimes dietitians who recommend arbitrary portion sizes. Parents feel like, well, I have to eat that amount. And you mentioned Ellyn Satter and the division of responsibility and feeding theory. And I think what parents are oftentimes really the eyeopening component of the DOR in feeding is that it's, as Ellyn says, the baby's job to determine how much or even whether they eat. And that's language that they've kind of added recently, or whether that some days your child and in this case, your baby may not eat. And that's okay because it's not your job to make your baby eat.

Katie Ferraro (15m 35s):

But for some parents, they grew up in environmental. No, it is the parent's job to make the kid eat. Or the doctor says the kid has to eat this much. And so there's conflicting messages out there .

Marsha Dunn Klein (15m 43s):

Absolutely. And one of the brilliant parts about thinking about feeding babies from a baby led weaning or a very responsive way is that we are allowing, encouraging actually requiring we grown-ups to offer, but babies to decide what they're going to eat and they know how they're ready. And so can you work with so many babies and some of them just take the food right away and are so excited. And other ones are just a bit more cautious. Babies have different temperaments, different experiences. So we want to, as adults create positive experiences with them so that they want to come to the table. And that being in the high chair is an enjoyable place to be. And they're not afraid and worried and pressured to eat differently.

Marsha Dunn Klein (16m 26s):

We're giving them the opportunity. And as they gain skills, as food is meaningful to them, as food is enjoyable, children will eat more. And the brilliance of this approach is that it is supporting internal motivation, internal what we call interoception like, how it feels inside of us. You know, it's, I feel, and gradually the baby's going to feel some hunger and notice that food relates to that hunger. And that's going to be later in a year between a year until you're going to see a lot more relationship to hunger when babies first start, they're eating. Cause it's curious. Cause it's interesting. Cause it's sensory. Cause it's playful

Katie Ferraro (17m 3s):

Now not to get negative. Cause I know you love to focus on the positive, but you are a feeding therapist and you are an expert who works with many types of children, including those that have feeding challenges. So if we may learn from your experiences, is there a particular language or behavior that you see parents probably inadvertently engaging in that causes them to quote unquote, get out of their lane? Like what are the things that parents are doing that might cause the baby to go into feeding therapy, not blaming or shaming. The parents just understanding that you work with a lot of kids with feeding challenges.

Marsha Dunn Klein (17m 37s):

Absolutely. We're not going to blame or shame. I believe parents are doing the best they can. I believe children are doing the best they can, but we have to figure out how to make those matches work really well together. But for example, I've known lots of parents through the years that decide that the first food they're giving their baby is going to be a jarred baby food. If families are going to use jarred baby food, I love them to use it as a smoothie and a cup because the baby then gets to be in charge or use it through straws later on. You know? So the baby gets to be in charge, but I've met many families who think my baby's ready to eat by mouth and I'm going to give them this jar of baby food. And somehow have believed that that jar is the serving size.

Marsha Dunn Klein (18m 17s):

That could be a misperception because of the jar. If you think it's a serving size, you're going to get it wrong because some babies want to eat more.

Katie Ferraro (18m 24s):

I'm a dietitian. And I thought that with my oldest, I was like, this three ounces must be the magical amount of smashed up carrots. Like I should know better, but I'm the victim of marketing

Marsha Dunn Klein (18m 33s):

Right? But so if you think that's the serving size, you get it wrong because some babies want more and some want less, which is the joy of an intrinsically motivated baby led weaning approach because you're letting the child decide how much of this food, whatever the food is that they're going to eat. So that's one mistake cause that families can make and it's natural. It's common, but it's possible that it doesn't work for the child. It's also possible that the child, the parent ended the meal, we got rid of the food in the jar, the meals over, but the child didn't have the opportunity to say I was done because the parent removed the food or it's possible at the end of that meal, the child wanted more and they learned, oh, nobody cares if I need more because there was just no more food.

Marsha Dunn Klein (19m 14s):

So that's an example. Another example could be when that doctor said, I want your child to catch up in their growth. The baby ate, whatever the baby wanted. And you were being just lovely at offering and waiting for the child, eat what they could. But at the end of the meal, somehow the parents believed my child didn't get enough in to eat today. So I'm going to just get them to eat a few more bites. I'm going to get them to just sit here a little longer and get them to eat more, whatever we get into that role of it's my job to get them to eat we're out of our lane. And so, I mean, some children who aren't eating enough love medical challenges. Of course we have to pay attention to that. But some of those kiddos may need feeding tubes or extra supplementation or the food prepared in an easier way for them to eat it because maybe chewing it.

Marsha Dunn Klein (19m 58s):

It's too hard. There are lots of ways we can deal with that. But if we're beginning to feel like, oh, it's my job. Just get more in. We've got to stop and think, whoa, what's going on. The other thing, Katie, you know, as a dietitian so well is that, oh my gosh, between six months and three years, babies volumes at each meal can vary. What I love about baby led weaning and early transitions to solids. Is the baby still breastfeeding or bottle feeding. They're still getting nutrition while they're learning to gain skills with eating the volume fluctuations volume fluctuates a lot. So no two meals are the same. No seven meals are the same babies, have a big meal and a little meal. And they're enthusiastic about this food not so enthusiastic and they're tired that babies bring to the mealtime, their readiness, their mood, their temperament, their how much they've eaten, how recently, what they think of green food.

Marsha Dunn Klein (20m 49s):

They bring all that to the table. And so this meal may not be a huge meal, but the next meal, they may have two big meals in a row and then kind of a wimpy meal. That's how babies eat. But when we, as grownups start expecting, you need to eat same amount, every meal, it can go wrong. Can I give you a great example? Your examples are always the greatest. All right. So this is a 19 month old baby came into the office and just looked like a gorgeous, healthy baby. He was doing advanced language talking. He looked stocky. He was chubby. He just looked great. So babies that look so healthy often weren't coming into my office. Cause I often saw a lot of really medically challenged babies.

Marsha Dunn Klein (21m 29s):

Okay. So this mom said her concern was the child was screaming. Every time she tried to put them in the high chair. So mealtime was a battleground and oh my goodness, my heart breaks because this mom just wants to feed her child and things went wrong. But when you ask her, when did it start going wrong and what's going on? And she said to me, and you're gonna appreciate this, Katie. She said, I went to a dietitian when my child was 12 months of age. And I said to the dietitian, I don't know anything about feeding my baby. I really have no idea. And she had been doing baby foods before that. And so the dietitian said, well, this is about how much babies eat at about what age and about the serving size.

Marsha Dunn Klein (22m 11s):

And we want to aim for, you know, some protein and some fruit and some vegetables and some carbohydrate and some dairy, you know? So they, the dietitian did what dietitians do. Great. They just told us these are the concepts, but this very sweet mom who wanted it to be the best mom ever decided I will give my child all of that, all the right amounts, every meal, and I will make him eat it. And honestly, I'm just not blaming this mom, but she thought that was her job. And those of us who feed babies a lot, know that some days they just ate grapes. And some days there was a lot of cheese and some toast and some days it was little pieces of ham. And some days they liked the avocado and some days they didn't. So those of us who know babies know that we're going to offer, and it's going to take a while for it to feel like a totally balanced diet, right?

Marsha Dunn Klein (22m 55s):

As children gained interest and skills. But this mom bless her sweetheart decided that if a tablespoon of each food group is the amount I will get that amount in and he will sit there until he gets that in and I'm going to be a good parent. And so what happened by 19 months is the mom had gotten out of her lane because she thought it was her job to get all that food in. And he basically said, I'm rebelling. You're not in charge of my mouth. I don't want to be in the high chair. This is terrible. And all we had to do was help her put food, offered, sit nearby, him, eat her food. And in a couple of weeks, he was back to eating on his own, just fine. But we also give the vacation a highchair for a couple of weeks. Cause it was a bit also,

Katie Ferraro (23m 36s):

If I can just interject, we can also help that dietitian with skills to intervene before feeding therapy is needed by knowing about, for example, your get permission approach and what a positive tilt is and educating parents, because sometimes to be honest and I, this is my fault as well as a dietitian, we sometimes just get so zeroed in on the numbers that maybe that mom walked away thinking that that was the most important thing because that dietitian wasn't looking at the developmental appropriateness of those recommendations or even the mom's capacity to understand and interpret that. And dietitians have a bad habit of being the food police. Part of the work that I do is educating other dieticians on different approaches to feeding. Cause we are still learning in our nutrition throughout the lifecycle courses.

Katie Ferraro (24m 17s):

And I teach nutrition throughout the life cycle at the college and university level, Marcia, the books talk about starting solid foods, purees by spoon force-feeding at four months of age, like how is the profession supposed to help a mom like that? Not get defeating therapy if they're not even learning about the research that supports a baby led approach like this kind of a larger problem, maybe for a different episode. But I appreciate you sharing that anecdote. I don't want to blame that dietitian, but there's certainly a lot of work to be done

Marsha Dunn Klein (24m 44s):

Well, and to be fair, the dietitian may have said things exactly right. And the parent interpreted it differently because she wanted to be a really great parent or one of my pet peeves is that I think when a parent comes to us with questions and we give some support, we have to find a way to follow up and know in a week, Hey, how's that going? How would those ideas going? Because the sweet mom went from 12 months to 19 months struggling. And didn't go back to ask the dietitian because she already knew quote what she was supposed to be doing, quote. And it took her till 19 months for the pediatrician to say, you know, you need some support.

Katie Ferraro (25m 19s):

And that's why I love like coaching. And we do weekly office hours with our students and come back on and tell me, how did it go? Trying lamb and a mom and be like, no, it was an absolute and utter abject failure. And here's, what's happened. They're not going to tell you that on social media and that's not the forum for it anyway, but I love the smaller, more intimate groups where you can follow with all right, what went wrong and what can we learn from it? And another mom tried that this week. And how did that work? Like that makes you feel so much more connected to other parents who are going through the same thing so that you don't get to a point where you need feeding therapy. And I love and respect the work that feeding therapists do, but there's so much we can do to help prevent even needing to go there.

Marsha Dunn Klein (25m 52s):

Exactly. Exactly. So we teach baby first tastes classes. You know that when you're going from breast and bottle to solids, you know, our clinic does that. I don't own rent anymore, but the clinic I co-founded, I'm still offers those. And these are courses for, you know, babies, typically developing babies and parents that are just that want this kind of support, just like you're offering your baby led weaning classes. There is now I'm so grateful there is support out there for parents to sort of hear these stories. One of the things I say to parents is when you're offering food again, it's not to get food in it's to find out what does your child love? If we can think about reframing it differently and we can think about making sure parents know that followup is possible and encouraged, we can prevent so many challenges.

Marsha Dunn Klein (26m 38s):

Another one of my pet peeves, Katie is follow-up. And I think that a parent should not call a feeding clinic and say, we have a waitlist for four months. That's totally inappropriate. In my mind when parents call saying, I'm worried about feeding, they need to be able to get in right away because we all know that feeding challenges can just get worse when it's going bad. It can really go down the two pretty quickly, parents struggle and need support. So whether you're seeing a dietician to give you ideas or feeding therapists, or whether you're just trying to get into a clinic that offers support, we have to offer timely support and timely up. That's easy. So things don't go wrong and go back

Katie Ferraro (27m 15s):

Marsha for parents who do want to learn more, what courses do you currently offer? We'll be offering soon that parents, as well as healthcare practitioners who work in feeding can take to learn more so that we can be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Marsha Dunn Klein (27m 29s):

Well, I mean, I really just send people to your Instagram account, into your courses. I just

Katie Ferraro (27m 34s):

Send them to your courses

Marsha Dunn Klein (27m 35s):

For typically developing children. I'm going to send them to places that are already doing that. I don't have a course like that right now, because there are people that are great people out there doing it, right? So that's one thing. Some parents are readers. And so they're going to read books on this. And some parents are visual learners and an Instagram learners. So there's different ways, but when things start going wrong, they get permission Institute. My platform, we do have courses on ones that's called the dear parent. And so people could go right now to the get permission Institute and look up the deer parent class and it's free. And so it's a way to just find out about, do your parents essentially do your parent, you have a child who's really a picky eater.

Marsha Dunn Klein (28m 19s):

Let's talk about it. The kids that I tend to work with tend to be the most extreme of picky eaters that have a really, really narrow diet. So there is some beginning help there in that regard. There's some classes on what does pressure do to the body when you press your kids to eat so permission and pressure is a course that we offer. We offer a course about setting up the environment of mealtime peace. We offer a course in toothbrushing in the sensory aspects of food. So when a parent is feeling that their situation has gotten to be a battlefield and really uncomfortable, those extremes questions, you might want to come to our website to see,

Katie Ferraro (28m 58s):

Well, Marcia, thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise. And I just, I love your way with language. I know you're an occupational therapist, but part of me is like in another world, you're speech expert too, because you choose your words so wisely because words really matter. And I appreciate all of the words that you've taught us and brought to us in the feeding world, through which I can't believe it's like 50 years of your body of work and you're still going at it. So I hope I have half the energy that you do when I am in the decade of life that you are.

Marsha Dunn Klein (29m 24s):

Thank you so much. And I, I love to come back. You and I chat and we have so many topics.

Katie Ferraro (29m 29s):

I'm so sorry. Every time you work with me, it makes more work for you because we come up with at least two more episode ideas that we need to do. I will link to everything in the show notes for this episode. If you guys go to BLW podcast.com and just type Marsha I'll link to all of your previous episodes, as well as your course. And then if you don't mind just sharing the full title of your most recent book too, because I think that really resonates with a lot of parents in our audience. So

Marsha Dunn Klein (29m 51s):

Those parents that have children who are really picky eaters, my most recent book is called anxious eaters, anxious, mealtimes, practical, and compassionate strategies for mealtime peace. And it is really filled with what and lots of practical information I offer a master course. That's three days long on that topic for professionals that are really interested in it. And we've never turned a parent away, but it isn't actually, it's meant to give feeding therapist ideas about how to support families. It's long, but it's really practical Katie. So

Katie Ferraro (30m 24s):

We have a lot of practitioners who listen as well. So I'll link to those courses as well, but also everything is on Marsha's site. I get permission to institute.com. Yes. Thank you, Marcia. As pleasure speaking with you. Thanks,

Marsha Dunn Klein (30m 34s):

Katie keeps sharing your passion out there. Families need you.

Katie Ferraro (30m 38s):

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode with Marcia, Don Klein. It's so hard to interview her because for the first half an hour, I can't stop talking to her and she's like halfway through like, do you want to do this interview? It's like, oh yeah, sorry, let me ask you the questions and record it. I just absolutely love speaking with her. I love hearing the history of where she's been from the pioneering work that she's done in infant feeding. And then the fact that she's accessible to us as parents and other healthcare practitioners to share what literally is more than five decades of work at this point and do the math on that. She'll tell you she's in her seventies and she is just so incredibly energetic and still cranking out trainings left and right. So go to get permission institute.com, Marsha, thank you for everything you do.

Katie Ferraro (31m 18s):

And I will also link to all of the resources because there were a lot that Marsha Dunn mentioned in today's episode. All you have to do is go to the show notes@blwpodcast.com/206. Thanks for listening guys.