Food Exposures Log

🕵️ Food Explorer Log: Step-by-Step Sensory Food Progress Booklet

This is an interactive tool to log progress for kids with feeding challenges (Paediatric Feeding Disorder, ARFID, sensory challenges, or neurodiversity). I often also use the term "picky eaters" or "fussy eaters" too because this helps families find the resources they need.

I have found in my experience as a paediatric Speech Language and Feeding Therapist that parents often don't know how to get started with helping their child's eating when they refuse to eat new foods, and they feel deflated at a lack of progress. When we use the Steps To Eating framework we can see where to start with exposures to new foods that don't feel confronting for the child, and we can recognise all the ways they've moved forward! It moves us away from "they won't eat anything new" to "they've touched 5 new foods this week!"

One of the best ways to help kids eat new foods is through slow, repeated, positive exposures. This tool helps you do that :)

This tool takes the useful parts of the Steps To Eating approach, and implements it in a Responsive Feeding approach, leaving behind the pressure making it much more neuro-affirming - it's all in the approach!

The resources includes instructions and guidance on how to use it which makes it a great tool for:

• Parents
• Speech Language Therapists
• Occupational Therapists
• Teachers
• Early Childcare Educators
• Special Education 

🔍 Inside the Booklet: What You’ll Get

The 36-page interactive workbook includes:

• Parent Information: Describing how to use the Steps to Eating approach in a neuro-affirming way, and offering ideas for food exposures at each step
• The Full Steps-to-Eating Chart: so parents can see just how many micro-steps there are between tolerating and eating a new food, and understand how gentle exposures will build over time
• Check In Log Pages: log what foods your Food Explorer currently eats, what foods they want to explore, and what foods they've learned to eat!
• Individual Food Explorer Pages: Each Step to Eating has its own page. As a Food Explorer moves to a new step with that food, they get to write or draw it on that step's page, recognising and celebrating their own success :)

Okay excuse the rest of the description as buzzword slop - I just need to make sure families and professionals find this tool to help their food explorers xxx 

Are you a paediatric feeding therapist, educator, or parent looking for a gentle, respectful way to support selective eaters? Do you want to move away from high-pressure tactics and celebrate the beautiful, micro-wins of food exploration?

Designed by a paediatric speech-language and feeding therapist, the Food Explorer Log is a neurodiversity-affirming, responsive feeding tool that turns food interaction into a fun, low-stress investigation!

Rather than focusing on the high-pressure binary of "did they eat it or not?", this booklet uses a systematic exposure perspective to help children explore food at their own comfortable pace.

🧠 A Responsive, Neuro-Affirming Approach to Feeding

Traditional feeding approaches can sometimes feel demanding or compliance-based. This log is built on the principles of responsive feeding therapy:

• Autonomy-First: Respects the child’s boundaries and bodily autonomy.
• Low-Pressure: Shifts the goal from "eating" to "exploring."
• Somatic Awareness: Helps children feel safe in their bodies while interacting with new sensory profiles.
• Parent Education: Shifts the caregiver's mindset from a binary "they didn't eat it" to "look at this amazing progress they made today!"

📈 Celebrate the Micro-Wins (Moving Past the Binary!)

For kids with sensory processing differences, ARFID, or what I refer to as "clinically significant picky eating" (often undiagnosed Paediatric Feeding Disorder), taking a bite is the very top of a massive mountain. This booklet breaks that mountain down into systematic, manageable steps so parents and therapists can track and celebrate real, incremental progress.

🎯 Perfect For:

• Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) & Occupational Therapists (OTs) looking for neurodiversity-affirming clinic materials and home carryover tools.
• Special Education Teachers looking to establish a positive, pressure-free food exploration routine.
• Parents wanting an evidence-based, responsive tool to ease mealtime anxiety and track their child's unique wins.

💡 How to Use:

1. Print & Assemble: Create a personalized "Food Explorer" booklet for each child.
2. Explore Safely: Let the child lead. When they comfortably interact with a food, they can write or draw that food on the corresponding step's page.
3. Reflect & Celebrate: Use the visual pages to show parents the concrete, incredible steps of progress their child is making every single week—long before the food ever reaches their mouth!