Is your kid a picky eater? Montrealers develop online resources, course to help

For some children, trying new foods can be quite the challenge.

Montrealers Kathryn Yao and Victoria Milbrath co-founded an initiative to help tackle that.

ABC Yum provides information about picky eaters, with a special focus on neurodivergent children and their families. The online platform gives them the tools they need to make mealtimes a more pleasurable experience.

“Picky eating is really, really difficult if you don’t have the resources and it’s something that could feel very isolating,” said Yao, who is an occupational therapist.

Milbrath, a pediatric registered dietitian, says she is aware that for some, getting access to resources is difficult. Through this project, they want to ensure that every family gets help, including those who struggle financially, by helping to fill the gap they say is present in the system. They offer free resources, and others at a low cost, in order to make it accessible for all.

“We know that in the public sector, the wait list for services for these kids are very, very long,” Milbrath said. “Once they do get the services, it’s usually a limited number of sessions that they have. Once it’s done, they’re left with either nothing or they can go private. And we know that private is not necessarily accessible for every family, especially when kids need years and years of therapy.

“This was an initiative to create resources for families to make it a little bit more accessible so they can do a lot of these things at home. Parts of therapy doesn’t replace therapy, but parts of it can be done at home. They can apply strategies at home, so really to make it accessible for these families,” she added.

Milbrath and Yao form a great duo.

“The beauty of our duo is that I work a lot with the parents working on the mindset shift and working on all the environment around mealtime,” said Milbrath. “So I work a lot with the parents, whereas Kathryn works a lot with the child hands-on doing activities to explore new foods and all that stuff.”

They also created a course called “The Picky Eating Fix Course” that combines their expertise alongside another registered dietician who also focuses on picky eating.

“It’s one of the things that we have that really helps families see changes in meal times and meal time struggles,” said Milbrath.

They also have additional resources, including blogs, free online resources, and food play ideas on Instagram.

“We also have food play products, which are products that I use all the time in therapy,” said Yao. “So they’re my top three food play products that I use in therapy, as well as food play games. So I do a lot of food play to help kids explore. And so we thought that it would be a great initiative so parents can start doing this at home, because we do see a lot of progress. And it’s something that’s super simple.”

The duo is also coming out with a workbook for kids to work on picky eating. It’s called “My Food Explorer Book.”

“This book is designed so that kids who are less willing to explore new foods are able to try new foods but in a more positive and playful way,” explained Yao. “But it also helps parents as well because it’s a step-by-step guide. So it starts with, for example, why we need to eat a variety of foods, as well as putting a goal in with the child. So the child gets to do their own goal. Then we go through a bunch of food play exploration, learning through our senses about the foods.

“At the end, they revisit their goal again and see did they really attain, did they get the new food in a diet, or did they try another food. And at the end, they get a certificate.”

Yao says that so far, they have received a positive response with the project.

“A lot of parents and a lot of therapists actually have been very interested in what we have to offer because I think there is a very limited amount of resources and I think parents do feel stuck and they don’t know where to go so we’ve had a lot of positive responses about our courses, about our resources, and about our Instagram because that is also a resource that we offer and a lot of parents are interested in that,” she said.

“With the right strategies, with the right resources, and with the right guides as well, we truly believe that this is something that can be worked on, that you can feel empowered doing, and that can change your picky eating, like your child’s behavior, as well as like the stress at meal times.”