Episode 57: Tune into this episode and uncover the power of a unique tool - The Ribbon Game - that's helping take the anxiety out of feeding therapy. Imagine a game that awards ribbons for various food properties like 'most spicy', 'most soft', or 'best squish', turning food exploration into a fun, stress-free experience for children. We share how this game can serve as a handy resource for therapists and parents alike by fostering communication and fun in a creative, hands-on way. This episode is a must-listen for anyone helping children overcome eating anxieties or for therapists in search of effective feeding therapy tools.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review! Also, visit our website The Speech Source for more resources and information, and follow us on Instagram @thespeechsource
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
Episode 57: Tune into this episode and uncover the power of a unique tool - The Ribbon Game - that's helping take the anxiety out of feeding therapy. Imagine a game that awards ribbons for various food properties like 'most spicy', 'most soft', or 'best squish', turning food exploration into a fun, stress-free experience for children. We share how this game can serve as a handy resource for therapists and parents alike by fostering communication and fun in a creative, hands-on way. This episode is a must-listen for anyone helping children overcome eating anxieties or for therapists in search of effective feeding therapy tools.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review! Also, visit our website The Speech Source for more resources and information, and follow us on Instagram @thespeechsource
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
Today, on Friday favorites, we have something fun, and I am really excited to hear about this, because Mary created this and she's going to be posting some pictures and putting it on our TPT store, so I'm really excited to hear all about it. So, mary, what is this?
Speaker 2:
Okay, I don't deserve all the fanfare for that, but it is simply a game that I have had a lot of success with for feeding therapy, and so it's just a blue ribbon game. It's a way to help kids who are struggling with the whole idea of trying foods. I'm going to kind of show it here. I created all these ribbons and I've used them for years and years in therapy, but I just kind of revamped them this week and it's a way to have this positive, encouraging kind of experience with new foods in the form of play, and so, with these ribbons, what we do is in feeding therapy, I'll usually have I'll do this with the child or I'll have this be homework for a child to work on with their parents at home. But I'll say, okay, we want them to get out of their favorites, right? We know they love Goldfish. We know they love veggie straws, whatever it is, cheetos, but there's so many other foods that you and I know and I'm talking to the parent you and I know they would love it. If they would only try it, they would love it. You know there's so many foods like that, especially in kind of these lateral moves that we talk about, of their crunchy, salty foods, all in the same category. This game is a way to help kids explore those foods, taste those foods, in a way that's fun, no pressure and a really big sensory experience. So I'll have them get some of their favorites say it's Cheetos and Goldfish. I'll say, okay, I want you to put some of those in a little ramekin, like those you know tiny little bowls. Or if you don't have those, you can use a muffin pan and, like you're putting different things in along a muffin pan, you can use paper bowls, but you're going to put a lot of foods out, say a muffin pan, for example. I'm going to go with you have 12, a sheet of 12 different muffins and you're going to put a little food in each of those containers.
Speaker 2:
But it's really important that you have a good ratio of foods that are familiar and foods that are new. I would say probably like a two to one ratio. If you have a really anxious eater, I would say twice as many foods they like as new ones. But if it's not too severe, I would say probably the other way around, so you have twice as many foods that are new than they don't like. So let's use the example of the Cheetos and Goldfish. I have parents go to the dollar store and get similar foods to that, but not the same.
Speaker 2:
So I'm like, okay, I want you to go to the dollar store or gas station and get little packages of foods that are salty and crunchy so they might come back with white cheddar cheez-its, regular cheez-its, bugles, rits like cheese crackers, anything kind of in that category, and then you're going to play this blue ribbon game together. So the blue ribbons are like a best in show type idea. We've got ribbons for most spicy, most peppery, most soft, most sweet. As you're exploring and tasting these foods you can give each food is going to be a winner. Each food gets a ribbon, and so the blue is all for food properties and this is going to be for taste. So you really don't know if it's sweet unless you've tried it, or you really don't know if it's peppery unless you've tried it. But that's okay. If your kid is not to this level, that's fine. You might be more at the level of like, hey, my kid won't even touch this food. My child is still anxious just seeing a new food. That's okay too. This is going to be also for kids to explore.
Speaker 2:
Foods is the red category and the red is the physical category of food. So, instead of the properties themselves, it's what can you do with the food I came up with best squirt, best squish, best roll, best plop, best snap. And so you're going to take the food and you're literally going to plop the banana on the table and see if that plops better, or the strawberry plops better. Yeah, that you give one a ribbon, but it's a way to talk about the property of the foods of oh my gosh, that banana really plopped. That was the best one.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so why did the banana plop but the pretzel didn't? You know, like the banana can't get a best snap, it doesn't snap. Why is that? And then you can talk about oh, bananas are soft, they are the same all the way through, they're not crunchy, they're not salty. So I've just found this game to be really great in feeding therapy or just as an activity with kids. And when you just want to talk, you want to increase the communication, increase the fun and not make it a big pressure game of okay, well, just try it, just try a bite, because that's not typically extremely successful. And then the last category I have are the gold ribbons. And so these are like best overall and then best new food. I used to have just one best overall, but nine out of 10 times it's one of their already favorites.
Speaker 2:
So it's like hold on, that didn't do what I said. So, really, the best new food and it could be because they've flicked it or snapped it, that can you know be put in that category. And then the last page on this resource that I've created is a full sheet of blanks. These are all the ribbons that I use, and what I do is like these I cut them out, laminate them. But it's really important that you have blanks with you because you are going to laminate them If you're a therapist I would do that but or just because you're going to write on them and your kid is going to come up with their own descriptor.
Speaker 2:
I didn't want to have every single vocab word reflected in these ribbons because I wanted to encourage kids to think of their own vocabulary and their own ways to have a food be best in something. So, like you might say, they're the most zesty, they're the most, you know, Oreo-y. You know kids come up with all different descriptors, but I think that's what's so. Fun is, then they can make connections with food, they can be creative and talk about food, and what I've seen from this game is that it takes the anxiety down. It takes the worry down for anxious eaters when we're playing a game, when they can be creative and they feel like they have the ability to push themselves as much or as little as they're comfortable in in that moment.
Speaker 2:
And then the last thing is if you've listened to our podcast for a while, you know I'm big about the footprint of a game or a resource. You got to earn your keep around here, so it had to be small and it fits perfectly in one of these little you know crayon box whatever's, and so if you put your deck in here, then you have a really easy way to store these ribbons on your table If you're a parent or on your therapy table. But yeah, so this is a resource I just created because I saw the need for it and my own therapy and then, as I started using it, clinicians were like hey, what are you doing with those? Those like wait a minute, tell me more because I need more ideas. And so just kind of came about organically and wanted to share.
Speaker 1:
I love that and I think this is such a great game for if you've been doing therapy for a little while and you're about to move up to something harder or we're getting to that stage where things are getting tiring or we're getting burned out.
Speaker 1:
I always and even with speech therapy if I'm in a session and you can kind of just tell when things are getting difficult with a child or they're over it or they're bored or something, and I always think, okay, go back to neutral, go back, go backwards, go, do something fun, let's get them kind of just neutral and okay again in this game. It's going to be perfect for that in a therapy session or even at home. If you're at home and you're thinking, okay, we're struggling, we're seeing frustrations, kind of having something that gets them to that place where it's fun, it's competitive, it's fun, they're getting ownership because they're getting to label what the foods are or what they're doing, and you're taking that pressure away because you don't have to eat it. You can go to the red cards and let's see what they do. It gives them something to do without feeling the pressure and I think that's brilliant, mary, I love it.
Speaker 2:
Well, thank you, it's just a fun game. Yeah, you know, I've had a lot of fun with it. Actually, thinking back, I started this a long time ago. I created it for a child I was seeing in therapy. We were actually working on Chick-fil-A sauces and so I wanted to do this fun taste test because I found in feeding therapy that kids who do not like condiments like ketchup, honey, barbecue sauce, teriyaki if we're not at that level to be able to like dip our chicken nugget and ketchup or barbecue sauce, chick-fil-a sauce then it's going to be really hard to get to the level of meals.
Speaker 2:
When you have a stir fry or you have a lasagna, or you have just a pasta with a marinara sauce. It's almost like this multitask in the brain of you have to not only think and handle one whole food, but then your mind is trying to make sense of this other. You know all these different tastes and then it's coming together. All to say, I do this a lot with sauces. So if you are in the South and are blessed to have a Chick-fil-A near you, then you can go and ask them for one of each of their sauces. Get your chicken nuggets, your french fries, whatever, and then that's also a really good way to use this game is to dip in the different sauces and find your favorite. Just the fact of, like you said earlier, having ownership. This is their game. This is their idea of who gets what ribbon. It's just again, it's just been a really fun game, been really successful for me with my patients, with feeding therapy, and I love things that bring fun and curiosity into food and the people that we share them with.
Speaker 1:
So thank you for sharing that, and we will post some pictures and make sure everybody has access to check these out if they're interested.