Feeding Therapy
We help reduce the stressors around mealtime for your child and your family
Creative Techniques for Improved Eating Habits
Does your child refuse different food textures? Are they experiencing difficulty chewing or swallowing food? If mealtimes are a constant struggle or your child is a picky eater, it can impact your child’s well-being and overall health. Feeding therapy can help by making the process of eating easier and more enjoyable.
Located in Milford and Danbury, Connecticut, we help children experiencing a variety of feeding disorders. Our therapists work closely with children and their families to determine the source of difficulties and develop very specific therapies to solve the challenges that your child is facing. Depending on your child’s underlying reasons, whether they are sensory, motor, or a combination of both, our therapists will devise a sensory-motor approach to addressing the barriers to your child’s ability to eat an age-appropriate meal.
Goals for feeding therapy at KidSense are as follows:
- Facilitating the sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional milestones related to feeding that have not yet been met by your child.
- Developing your child’s feeding skills and behaviors around new and familiar foods.
- Assisting children and families in achieving their individual eating goals, as defined in an initial one-on-one assessment.
- Helping children and families enjoy mealtime as a positive social activity.
- Maximizing hydration and nutrition intake to support growth and development at all ages
- Comfortable food exploration of foods of various colors, textures, temperatures, sizes, and smells
What Causes Feeding Difficulties?
There are numerous reasons why children have trouble eating and swallowing:
- Facial, oral, dental, pharyngeal structural differences resulting in choking, gagging, or coughing
- Reduced coordination of motor movements making chewing and swallowing difficult as a result of neurological disorders
- Medical complications, prematurity, cardiac conditions, traumatic injury
- Dependence on alternative/enteral nutrition
- Growth and weight problems, malnutrition
- Chronic respiratory issues, reflux, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea
- Metabolic disturbances, food allergies
- Sensory integration disorders
- Extreme selectivity and food refusal
- Under-eating or over-eating
- Food anxieties or aversions
- Rigidity with eating routines and food preferences
Signs Your Child Needs Feeding Therapy
Does your child display any of the following?
Your Child is Upset at the Mealtimes
If mealtimes result in tears or meltdowns, this can be an indicator your child’s feeding experience is not a pleasant one. Your child may be showing signs of feeding difficulties if your child is frequently upset when presented with new food, throws utensils, or shows signs of discomfort or pain while eating. Another sign may be if your child struggles to stay seated or attempts to eat at a meal for an excessively long period of time.
Poor or Excessive Weight Gain
Despite your best efforts to get your child to eat a healthy meal, if they are showing abnormal growth and or weight-gain patterns, feeding therapy is recommended. Such children might also have obsessive or compulsive feeding disorders which can negatively impact their development.
Limited or Restricted Intake
If your child refuses to eat anything but a few favorite foods or has an aversion to certain colors, textures, or food categories, it might indicate a feeding disorder. Such children typically limit the food they eat to specific methods of preparation, brands, temperatures, or flavors. Additionally, if your child eats less than 20% of foods offered at mealtimes this can be an indicator of feeding difficulties.
Trouble Eating Solid Food
If your child consumes mostly liquids or semi-solids, frequently vomits, or has trouble shifting from purees to solids by the age of 12 months, it may indicate a pediatric feeding disorder or a digestive disorder. Such children might also experience continued bloating, constipation, or diarrhea or could digest only modified diets. They might also experience difficulty self-feeding (e.g., using a spoon/fork) after 24 months of age or prefer to consume non-food items e.g. dirt, grass, or paper.
Difficulties in Swallowing
Some children have difficulties in manipulating or swallowing food or liquids from their mouth into their throat and to their stomach. Such children might experience the following while eating:
- Watery eyes or runny nose
- Food spills out of their mouth
- Cannot drink from an open cup or straw without spillage
- Take more than 30 minutes to eat meals
- Excessive throat clearing, coughing, "wet" sounding voice after eating
- Throwing their head back or using a really forceful swallow to get food down
Why Choose KidSense (Milford and Danbury, CT) for Feeding Therapy
When your child isn’t eating well, we can help
- Creative Approach - Our feeding therapists use creative ways to make eating fun for your child. We recognize eating can be a stressful task for our clients and therefore we look to incorporate strategies and techniques that will positively support your child’s food journey.
- Customized Treatment Plan - Our therapists take into account nutritional guidelines, family values, and most importantly current status to deliver interventions that meet them where they are and lead them to their goals.
- Transdisciplinary Team - Your child’s feeding problem could originate from a variety of underlying issues. Our transdisciplinary team of Occupational therapists, Speech-Language pathologists, and Mental Health Clinicians collaborate together to help improve your child’s feeding difficulties.
- Well-trained Staff - Our staff has a variety of training backgrounds including the SOS Approach, and training from Melanie Potuck (mymunchbug.com). Our therapists utilize sensory/play-based approach to food exploration, oro-myofunctional approaches to addressing oral motor concerns, and individualized treatment for each child.
- Specialized Care - We provide specialized intervention for children with all types of feeding concerns including popular mealtime management methods such as the SOS Approach and Food Chaining. These methods allow the therapists to address the feeding difficulties using a playful and interactive approach.
What is Involved in a Feeding Evaluation?
A High-Quality Assessment for Valid and Reliable Results
The therapist will gather information regarding your child's medical history, developmental milestones, current diet, and current concerns during a feeding evaluation. Depending on their age and feeding abilities, we ask that families bring a sampling of food items, typically including prefered and non preferred foods for the evaluation. The therapist may also evaluate the following:
- Oral motor skills (e.g. chewing patterns, tongue/lip function, etc)
- Consumption of thin liquids (e.g., bottle, breastfeeding, cup drinking, straw drinking)
- Response and consumption of preferred and non-preferred solid foods
- Child’s self-awareness of feeding skills through ratings of foods consumed
- Play with a variety of tactile experiences (e.g., playing in shaving cream, sand, rice, water)
- Analysis of symptoms and problematic feeding through norm-referenced tools such as the Pediatric Eating Assessment Tool (PediEat)
Feeding Therapy Treatment
We help your child to eat a balanced variety of foods
Our feeding therapy includes but is not limited to the following:
- Strategies to improve breastfeeding and or bottle-feeding abilities
- Increasing tolerance for messy play with food and non-food items
- Development of self-feeding skills, through the use of suitable utensils
- Improvement of oral motor skills (ex. chewing, biting, tongue movement)
- Introduction new foods into your child's diet and improving oral intake
- Eating meals with more/mixed texture (for example, mac-and-cheese, yogurt with fruit bits) or less texture (ex. smooth yogurt, pudding)
- Increasing feeding strength, endurance, and attention during mealtimes
- Optimizing positioning & seating for mealtimes (e.g. highchair, seated at the table).
- Food exploration through all the senses.
- Use play based activities to make feeding treatment as pleasant and pleasurable for your child as possible.
- Pacing strategies to minimize overstuffing/food pocketing
External Feeding Therapy Resources for Families, Parents and Caregivers
Resources do not supplement an evaluation and treatment plan created by a licensed therapist and should be used for informational purposes only.
SOS Approach to Feeding
https://sosapproachtofeeding.com/start-here-parents/
Helping Children Flourish – Starting With the Dinner Table
Feeding Matters
https://www.feedingmatters.org/
Furthering advances in pediatric feeding disorder by accelerating identification, igniting research, and promoting collaborative care for children and families
Catherine Shaker Swallowing and Feeding Seminars
https://shaker4swallowingandfeeding.com/
Neonates, Medically Fragile Infants, and Children through School Age
Melanie Potock: Pediatric Feeding Expert and Author
https://mymunchbug.com/free-toolbox/
Free downloads that make feeding kids so much easier!
TalkTools
https://talktools.com/
Speech & Feeding Therapy Tools, Techniques, & Training
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my child needs this service?
Feeding therapy can be warranted for clients of all ages. Infants and toddlers may require feeding therapy if they have difficulty drinking from a bottle, chewing, and or swallowing. Additionally, feeding therapy can help picky and anxious eaters. Other examples for feeding therapy include if your child drools excessively, holds food in their mouth, gags, or chokes. If you or your child's doctor has nutritional concerns or if you are having to supplement your child's diet with alternatives to meet their diet needs, feeding therapy may also be appropriate.
What does your Evaluation Process look like?
A feeding therapy evaluation includes an extensive case history, food journals, sampling of a variety of food textures/temperatures/colors, and evaluation of how the client feeds themselves, chews, and swallows. We typically ask families to bring 2 preferred and 2 non-preferred food items, but recognize that given the sensitivity of feeding concerns a client may not always want to try the food presented. In these instances the therapist may ask you for additional information regarding typical mealtimes, and or ask you to provide a video.
What’s your treatment approach for this service?
The eating process is extremely complex and involves many different elements that need to work together in a cohesive manner. A variety of factors may contribute to a child's difficulty with feeding. Therapists that are on our Feeding Team evaluate and provide specialized intervention for children with all types of feeding concerns including recognize mealtime management methods such as the SOS Approach and Food Chaining. These methods allow the therapists to address the feeding difficulties using a playful and interactive approach. At KidSense, we use a hierarchy of steps to allow the child to become desensitized to different tastes, textures, and temperatures. We build a trusting relationship with the child and help them learn to enjoy the eating process, which positively impacts the social aspect of mealtimes. Additionally, we create new positive feelings associated with feeding in order to decrease or eliminate feelings of anxiety that can surround mealtimes. Food is never forced upon a client during feeding therapy at KidSense.
Which “Collaborative Therapy Services” do you offer in conjunction with this service?
Our Team works closely with parents and caregivers to ensure success and carryover within the home environment to create a whole family solution. We also work closely with the child's medical providers and refer them to ENT, nutritionist, and counseling services as needed.
Read up on Feeding Therapy
KidSense Locations
KidSense Therapy Group has two Convenient locations in Milford and Danbury CT which serve our greater New Haven County area as well as the greater Fairfield County area. Both locations are fully staffed with both therapists as well as administrative professionals.
