Feeding Anabelle was pretty frustrating before I got a visual menu. I could never tell at any given moment what Anabelle wanted, and so a lot of food ended up on the floor, and in my hair, and in our dog’s hair. In the week before I got my visual menu, three full meals of good food ended up on the floor! It was very wasteful. Then I got the posters with photos of the food we eat, and the very first time I put them up, Anabelle walked over to them, I picked her up, and she pointed to the burrito. I thought, “No way, that’s too easy,” so I stood in front of them for a while longer to see if she would point to anything else, and she pointed to the burrito three more times! So I made her the burrito, and I just could not believe it -- she ate the WHOLE THING!! She never used to eat the whole thing!

It’s been great. It’s worked ever since then, for almost two months. Now she lets me know that she’s hungry by running to the back door where the posters are hanging and reaching up toward them. I use the posters to let her tell me what she wants when I don’t have time to plan out a meal, Anabelle is hungry, and I want it to be easy. The visual menu is a communication tool, and it’s up to you how you use it. It’s cool because I discovered, for example, that she really loves green beans. I had no idea what vegetables to feed her, because I kept giving her carrots, and she doesn’t like carrots, she likes green beans. I got to pick the foods I want on the posters, I got to decide what’s going to be the most healthy for her, and what I’m okay with, and it lets me feed her what she really likes.

--Erika, mother of 18-month-old Anabelle