Breaking Free of Picky Eating: A Science-Based Program for Parents

A practical, empathetic guide to help parents of picky eaters expand their child's eating flexibility.

Severe picky eating and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) can turn every meal into a stressful battlefield and negatively impact a child's growth and health, social and emotional development, and family relationships and functioning.

Breaking Free of Picky Eating provides parents and caregivers with essential information to help them better understand and support their picky eater. It explains how restrictive eating accommodations, borne out of love and concern, can inadvertently maintain food restrictions. The book introduces SPACE-ARFID, a parent-based psychotherapeutic approach to eating problems in children, which is itself an adaptation of the evidence-based SPACE treatment, designed to empower parents to help their child. In this practical step-by-step guide to the SPACE-ARFID process, parents will learn to identify and change restrictive eating accommodations, restore structure to mealtimes, and cope with challenges, all while making no demands of their child.

Packed with real-life case examples, practical worksheets, and exercises, parents will learn how to respond to restrictive eating supportively, involve their child appropriately, and celebrate every step of progress.