Who makes up the Feeding Therapy team?
Who makes up the Feeding Therapy team?
Together, the Feeding Therapy team seamlessly collaborates with each child’s entire therapeutic team to address best practices and individualized treatment plans. This collaboration between our highly-educated, compassionate staff maximize therapeutic outcomes and help support our clients to reach their fullest potential. At Eyas Landing, we value evidence-based practice, client-centeredness, community, diversity, collaboration, and flexibility.
What is Feeding Therapy?
At Eyas Landing, feeding therapy aims to help children develop the skills they need to eat and have healthy mealtime routines. Mealtime interventions can significantly improve a child’s overall health and well-being. Our Speech-Language Pathologists and Occupational Therapists are trained in understanding the significant emotional impact on a family when raising a child with picky eating and/or a limited diet. Therapists recognize that feeding is one of the most complex activities one engages in during early childhood and strive to be empathetic to the needs of the children and families.
Feeding Therapy Techniques
Evidence shows that children with Autism and sensory processing differences benefit from consistent mealtime routines and being slowly introduced to new foods. Therefore, the therapist works with the family to customize the therapy sessions to best reflect the child’s familiar mealtime routine and environment.
Feeding Therapists also use the following evidence-based techniques during their sessions:
Feeding Therapists also use the following evidence-based techniques during their sessions:
Feeding Therapy Adaptive Equipment
Eyas Landing is designed to work towards functional independence, meaning one child’s fork may look different from the next. Each child is unique in their skills and capacities. For example, a student may benefit from using an angled utensil to increase their feelings of success by promoting their ability to bring food to their mouth without spilling. A variety of adaptive equipment is used during mealtimes to foster these positive results.
Goal of Feeding Therapy
The first goal of the feeding team is that the mealtime environment is safe and supportive. Once children are able to maintain a regulated state in these environments, the team can address functional mealtime skills such as cup drinking, oral motor skills such as chewing and acceptance of non-preferred foods through graded consistent exposure and modeling.
Long term goals are to target increased food consumption and variety in diets to promote nutrition and health. Ultimately, the goal is for your child is to accept a wide variety of foods in their repertoires, eat a well-balanced and nutritious diet, and generalize these skills to outside environments.
Data for feeding therapy focuses on functional mealtime skills, oral motor skills, participation, and food consumption within fruits, grains, proteins, and vegetables. Setting feeding goals begins upon enrollment with the participation of the caregivers and therapists.
Progress is shared via therapy note and in-person after each therapy session. This allows for collaboration between the therapists and the family to ensure generalization of all mealtime strategies.
