The food doctor for babies and children


The Feeding Doctor

Look forward to dinner again.

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

End the power struggles. Find help for picky eating, food preoccupation, and address worries about weight. Make the family table a place everyone wants to be.

One in three parents will ask a doctor for help with feeding, but they don’t always know how to help. Described as “academic, but warm and down-to-earth,” Dr. Katja Rowell’s approach is grounded in research, but meets families where they are.

Love Me, Feed Me


2nd Edition Coming January 2023!

Love Me, Feed Me

A relationship-building, practical guide

Whether your child has been with you for ten days or ten years, learn practical ways to address feeding challenges while prioritizing felt-safety and connection. Explore the unique challenges many foster and adopted children experience around food and mealtimes. With research, clear guidance, and through the words of parents who have been there, learn to address food preoccupation, “hoarding,” sensory issues, feeding clinic “failure” and more. Stop the power struggles over food and help your children heal their relationship with food and their bodies.

Learn more

Second Edition of Love Me, Feed Me

Available January 2023 and Offering:
  • More information on how complex trauma, the neurodevelopmental lens, self- and co-regulation, and neurodivergence impact feeding.

  • More flexibility and practical information.

  • An understanding of responsive feeding and therapy.

  • A responsive and flexible framework for feeding kids with brain-based differences.

  • An understanding that felt safety and connection are the foundation for healing; where eating, health, and physical function are optimized.

  • Support for raising children living in bigger bodies.

  • Support for interoception (the body’s experience of internal senses and signals such as hunger, fullness, and emotions).

Photo by Jimmy Dean on Unsplash

The more we let the anxiety and control around food go, the more he lets go of the obsession surrounding food (what a concept). I’m not going to lie, it can be tough, but he is a whole new happy little mischievous toddler - and I LOVE it!!!!

—Anneliese, adoptive mom

Featured Content

Extreme Picky Eating

End mealtime battles and anxiety with practical strategies and tips to help turn around even “extreme” picky eating. Relationship-building steps replace power struggles, rewards, and bribes. Help your child eat to the best of their ability.

Conquer Picky Eating

 It’s never too late. Understand why you relate to food the way you do, and explore tools to help you: support appetite, decrease anxiety, make peace with food, eat out with confidence, and enjoy better health.

Resources

Browse resources, including articles, books, DVDs, social media and websites on responsive feeding, anti-diet and attuned eating, Health at Every Size (HAES™), and weight bias.

Explore Responsive Feeding

A conversation with Katja Rowell, MD on extreme picky eating and children with feeding challenges.

 The Original Lunch Box Card

Protect your child from pressure at school and away from home. Print, fill in, and laminate this “lunch box card.” Place it in your child’s lunch box and tell them that if an adult asks them to eat certain foods or in a certain order, they can point to or hand over the card.

“What a great idea!! My 6-year-old would be very happy not to have to explain to the grown-up, but rather just have a card from Mom.”

—Lisa

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Dr Katja Rowell — The Feeding Doctor

Described as “academic, but warm and down to earth,” Rowell believes that establishing a healthy feeding relationship, in essence

HOW children are fed, is preventive medicine. 

Katja Rowell, M.D. is a graduate of the University of Michigan medical school and served as a family physician in urban, rural, and university student health settings. During her time in practice, she was struck by how much suffering stems from the difficult relationships people have with food and their bodies. Responsive feeding and therapy helps children develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, and protects from the harmful impacts of diet culture.

Dr. Rowell has worked in child feeding for over a dozen years. She teaches the importance of responsive feeding and therapies to parents, pediatric feeding specialists, family support specialists, and childcare staff, and consults with corporate clients, nutrition education, and public health providers (and anyone that will listen!). 

Rowell has a special interest in serving fostering and adopting parents as they help their children heal from food insecurity, food trauma and more. Since 2010, she’s served on the medical advisory board of SPOON, a nonprofit supporting vulnerable children internationally, and in US foster care.

Rowell is a co-founder at Responsive Feeding Pro. RFPro is a digital learning platform for feeding professionals focused on a Responsive Feeding Therapy (RFT) framework for children with feeding and eating challenges. Rowell is involved in academic writing, supporting related research, and teaching.

Dr. Rowell founded Family Feeding Dynamics in 2009. After hearing, “Oh, you’re

the feeding doctor! What’s your website?” many times, Katja created the more memorable, “Feeding Doctor.”

Photo by Angela Mulligan on Unsplash

“I get to be a mom, not a food cop. Connor now asks for seconds on veggie soups and tomatoes on his burgers, and he’s not as obsessed with treats.”

— Kelly

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 Speaking

Dr. Katja Rowell is a sought-after speaker whose message is based on science, but grounded in the realities of family life. From corporate lunch-and-learns to medical Grand Rounds, or an international symposium on child welfare, Katja gets the word out about responsive, healthy feeding and therapies.

“She’s got a knack for simplifying otherwise complicated subject matter and mixes the right amount of humor to the topic at hand making it much more relevant and accessible.  She is as engaging as she is professional and has proven to be one of the best speakers we’ve worked with since the start of our education program.”

—Pablo Patino, Managing Director at Dietitian Central

“[Dr. Rowell’s] work and ideas are concrete, straightforward, and simple (if not always easy!) to implement. I love that the workshop provided strategies and techniques that are focused on the family and home life—as this is where most feeding goes on! I’ve learned from other programs how to work in sessions from a sensory perspective, but your model bridges the gap from therapy intervention to home.”

— Erin C. MOT, OTR/L on the Three Hour Workshop for Pediatric Feeding Pros

Children's nutritionist in Petrozavodsk

A pediatric nutritionist is a doctor who objectively assesses the development of the child, his eating behavior, individually develops therapeutic nutrition and controls the dynamics until the desired results are achieved (persistent remission and recovery).

Every year the number of children with overweight and obesity, food allergies is growing.

Obesity is "programmed" during fetal development and in the first two years of life. Unstable weight and fullness / excessive thinness in a child often indicate an internal failure of the body. If it is not eliminated in time, in the future it results in serious health problems.

Among the frequent consequences of obesity in children, which manifest themselves in adulthood, are hypertension, stroke, atherosclerosis, gout, reproductive dysfunction, urolithiasis, osteoarthritis, varicose veins of the lower extremities, hemorrhoids, sudden death syndrome, psychosocial disorders.

Therefore, if you notice a tendency to be overweight in a child, try to get an appointment with a pediatric dietitian as soon as possible. He will not only establish the cause of the formation of excess weight, but will also draw up an individual program for losing weight and normalizing weight.

Who needs a dietitian consultation?

  • children with allergies (create a balanced menu that provides all the needs of a growing body)
  • children with endocrinological diseases (diabetes and others). Nutrition in this case is one of the most important factors in the health of the child
  • children with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, including persistent constipation, frequent diarrhea
  • frail children with severe problems with growth and weight gain
  • obese children
  • children and adolescents with eating disorders

Services of a pediatric nutritionist at the Zdravlyandiya clinic

A pediatric nutritionist at the Zdravlyandiya Medical Center, after conducting research and diagnostics, develops not a general, but an optimal nutrition program for a particular patient. Observing it, the child gradually gets rid of the problems that cause weight anomalies.

Our nutritionist owns effective, evidence-based medicine-recognized methods for correcting obesity in children.

The advantage of the children's clinic "Zdravlyandiya" is the teamwork of doctors of different specialties, which increases the accuracy of diagnosis and the effectiveness of treatment. A nutritionist together with an endocrinologist and a psychologist (and, if necessary, a gastroenterologist, an allergist) will identify the reliable cause of the illness and eliminate it in a shorter time or adjust the child's diet in the best possible way.

Patients of Zdravlyandiya receive the necessary consultations, undergo laboratory and instrumental diagnostics (general and biochemical blood tests, urinalysis, ultrasound of the abdominal organs, etc.) within the same walls, in a comfortable environment, without wasting time waiting and queues. We tried to do everything to make visiting our clinic for a child an exciting adventure and a visit to the doctor leaves a pleasant impression.

We will help not only solve existing problems, but also teach your child healthy nutrition, and this is an investment in a healthy and long life!

Critical periods in which the risk of detrimental weight gain increases:

1 to 3 years

Formation of the function of the digestive system. You need to be careful about the situation when the baby is gaining weight too quickly, especially if you started complementary foods early and are trying to feed the baby in portions “according to the norms”. Remember that the child will eat exactly as much as his body needs.

2 to 8 years

The child changes the environment (goes to kindergarten, school), is stressed and may start to seize him. During this period, the child requires special attention. Otherwise, the child may try to satisfy loneliness with abundant food.

Adolescence from 12 years old

The child grows rapidly, his body is rebuilt, puberty begins, hormonal changes begin. It is important at this moment to replenish his diet with useful products that will create conditions for full development, and not for the accumulation of body fat.

Children's nutrition: what is it | Dietology.pro

06/01/2021 09:00