Feeding Therapy
Watch Me Grow
Does your child…
Eat a limited variety of food from all food groups or avoid an entire food group?
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Eat less than 20 foods consistently?
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No longer eat foods they used to eat?
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Engage in avoidance behaviors, such as tantruming, throwing food, screaming, or refusing to sit at the table during mealtimes?
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Take a long time to eat?
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Refuse meals?
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Struggle to meet growth milestones?
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Gag or vomit while eating?
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Cough, choke, or aspirate during or after feeds?
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Have difficulty weaning from bottles or transitioning to solids?
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Need assistance transitioning from tube feeds to oral feeds?
How do we Get started?
Feeding therapy focuses on teaching a child how to eat or eat better. The feeding therapy process begins with a telephone intake, where your provider will learn more about your child’s strengths and weaknesses, food likes and dislikes, and typical mealtime for your family. Then, your child will be scheduled for an in-person evaluation, where your provider will evaluate your child’s skills. Following this visit, a feedback session is scheduled to review the results of the evaluation and personalized treatment plan for on-going therapy visits.
Includes intake, assessment, feedback, and personalized treatment plan.
Feeding therapy evaluation$295Feeding therapy session$95 per sessionFeeding therapy techniques
There are many different approaches to feeding therapy including sensory, motor, and behavioral models—finding a good fit for your child is imperative. It is important to note that your child will never be forced to eat.
Sequential-Oral-Sensory (SOS) ApproachThe SOS Approach, developed by Dr. Kay Toomey, is a research-supported, play-based approach to feeding therapy. The SOS Approach focuses on increasing your child’s comfort level with food by exploring and learning about the different properties of food. There are many steps to eating. While many people believe eating begins at the mouth, eating actually begins with our eyes. The SOS Approach starts with the ability to look at, or tolerate being in the same room as, a particular food. Your child then learns to interact with food without directly touching it. This commonly occurs through use of utensils. Next, your child works on smelling foods before touching foods with their fingers, hands, body, and mouth. After your child is able to tolerate looking at, smelling, and touching foods, they then start working on tasting foods. Tasting involves touching food with the tip of the tongue, licking the food, biting the food and spitting it out, and, finally, biting and chewing the food. The SOS Approach allows a child to interact with food in a comfortable, playful, and non-stressful way.
Behavioral ApproachIn a behavioral approach, a reward system may be used. For example, whenever your child takes a bite from of new type of food, the therapist will provide a small reward. Once your child eats the whole piece of food, they may be given a bigger reward. Oftentimes, if your child is willing to try a new food once, they will be more likely to try the food again and require less need for reinforcement or rewards to try the same food in the future.
Feeding therapy is provided by
Jessica Schrock Heflin, MS, CCC-SLP.
To learn more about Jessica, click here.