Children thrive when they feel safe, comfortable, and confident in their feeding and swallowing skills so they can grow and learn.
Feeding Therapy
At Thrive Kids, consultations, assessment, and intervention are offered to target a wide range of feeding and swallowing disorders. Becky works with children from birth through adolescence, targeting concerns with feeding aversions, sensory related feeding challenges, and swallowing disorders. She also provides a supportive environment for parents and children who are g-tube dependent as they work towards increasing oral eating. Many feeding and swallowing issues occur secondary to disorders including but not limited to:
prematurity
cerebral palsy
genetic disorders
oral motor disorder
autism spectrum disorder
sensory processing disorder
seizure disorders
diet restrictions
developmental disabilities
Your child’s programming is individually tailored to accommodate your child and family’s current level and needs. Family members and caregivers involved will be trained on how to create a happy and safe mealtime experience with your child and how to incorporate therapy techniques into daily mealtimes. Families will receive an individualized home program to smoothly carryover learned skills and strategies.
Feeding therapy at Thrive Kids takes a global developmental approach in treating feeding challenges following evidence-based practice and current research in feeding and swallowing treatment. Research demonstrates developmental domains including sensory processing, oral motor, gross motor, and fine motor abilities are interrelated (Serel, Demir, Inal, & Karaduman, 2018). Children with feeding and swallowing disorders often present with delays or deficits across these areas. Thus, children narrowly defined as being “picky eaters” or as having “sensory feeding difficulties” often possess oral motor challenges that contribute to their feeding challenges and vice versa.
A global approach to feeding and swallowing disorders maximizes progress towards goals, ensuring that a child’s oral motor and sensory processing skills, ongoing medical conditions, feeding environment, and overall development are properly assessed and considered when creating an individualized treatment plan. For children that are g-tube dependent, caregiver training and education are provided to offer a supportive environment that encourages oral feeding. Feeding therapy may prioritize 1-2 areas of greatest need or target all areas simultaneously depending on each child’s current skill level. Collaboration with other healthcare professionals involved in your child’s care is also provided when appropriate to improve overall feeding and swallowing development.
