Who is feeding therapy for?
Feeding therapy can be a crucial step for children who experience challenges with eating, whether it’s due to sensory sensitivities, difficulty chewing or swallowing, restrictive or limited dietary range, or anxiety and stress around mealtimes. At Eat Speak Learn, feeding therapy provides a supportive environment where children can gradually develop a positive relationship with food, learn to explore new textures and tastes, and overcome anxieties or aversions. Through tailored strategies and professional guidance, feeding therapy helps children build the skills they need to enjoy a varied and balanced diet, ultimately improving their overall well-being and quality of life.
When it comes to feeding therapy, many parents hope for quick fixes and rapid progress. However, changing established behaviour patterns and building new habits is a journey that requires patience, consistency, and a lot of support. The path to helping your child develop a healthy relationship with food may be slow and steady, but the progress can be immense! Here at Eat Speak Learn, we offer a range of intervention pathways, tailored to suit every individual. These range from 1:1 feeding therapy with our speech pathologists, Dietitians, and occupational therapists, up to a variety of small group sessions catered to a range of ages.
The Power of Group Feeding Therapy: A Journey, not a Sprint
One of the key elements of successful feeding therapy, both individual and in a small group setting, is recognising that interventions take time. Changes don’t happen overnight. It’s essential for children to have regular practice both in therapy sessions and at home. Consistency is the foundation of progress, and when therapy strategies are reinforced in the home environment, the benefits are compounded.
In our feeding therapy sessions the environment is designed to be play-based and low-pressure, which is crucial for children who might have anxiety or negative associations with food. We use a variety of playful activities to introduce new foods, textures, and tastes in a way that feels safe and enjoyable for each child. The focus is on exploration and positive experiences rather than on what or how much a child eats. This neurodiversity affirming approach reduces stress and allows children to develop at their own pace. We know that giving each child autonomy and a sense of control brings out the best in each of them, even at the expense of a little more mess!
What types of feeding therapy are available, and which is right for our family?
Here at Eat Speak Learn, we offer a range of intervention pathways, tailored to suit every individual. These range from 1:1 feeding therapy with our speech pathologists, dietitians, and occupational therapists, up to a variety of small group sessions catered to a range of ages. Each intervention has it’s pros and cons, and can be modified to suit your family. For example, the pros of 1:1 therapy include a greater flexibility of days/times, potential for mobile visits to home or school, and the full attention of a single therapist. Small group therapy has the benefit of peer role modelling, multiple disciplines in each session, and more closely reflects experiences you’ll encounter in the real world, like eating in restaurants or at school.
Here’s a quick run down of the services we have at Eat Speak Learn:
1:1 feeding therapy
This is often delivered by a single therapist, either a speech pathologist, dietitian, or occupational therapist. While just your therapist will be in your regular sessions, they still work as part of a wider multidisciplinary team, which means they are able to organise collaborations and seek guidance from other members of the team to support your child if needed. Which discipline is best suited to lead your individual sessions will depend, with different disciplines specialising in different aspects of feeding.
Speech pathology: Speechies are our specialists in all things oral motor! If your child’s feeding difficulty includes difficulties with biting, chewing, safe swallowing (also called dysphagia or aspiration), physical differences like cleft palate or lip ties, fatigue, moving their tongue (called lateralisation, what a mouthful!), then a speechie is likely to be head of your feeding team!
- Dietetics: DT’s are our specialists in all things nutrition! This includes management of some health diagnoses like allergies or intolerances, eating disorders (including ARFID or PFD), malnutrition, malabsorption, growth concerns including faltering growth, and alternative feeding methods like tube feeding or medical supplementation. If any of these terms sound familiar to your child’s feeding journey, a dietitian might be head of your feeding team!
- Occupational therapy: OT’s are here for all things sensory and regulation, so if your child struggles to tolerate different textures, temperatures, smells, tastes, or eating environments, and OT might be on your feeding team!
- A multi-disciplinary team: if your little one is ticking several of the boxes up above, it’s possible that an integrated multidisciplinary approach is the gold standard support for your family. At Eat Speak Learn, we’re privileged to be able to deliver joint and multidisciplinary sessions to support clients with complex needs, drawing on the expertise of several different disciplines in a convenient single appointment. Talk about efficient!
Group therapy
One significant advantage of group therapy is the power of peer modelling. Children often learn best by watching others, and when they see their peers engaging with food in a positive way, it can encourage them to try new things. The group setting creates a sense of camaraderie and support, which can be incredibly motivating for young learners.
At Eat Speak Learn, we offer a range of feeding groups tailored to different age groups and developmental stages. Our programs are designed to meet your child’s specific needs, providing them with the tools they need to succeed on their feeding journey. Whether your child is just starting to explore new foods or working on overcoming specific challenges, we’re here to support them every step of the way. Because our groups are tailored to suit each cohort, they frequently change! Here is an overview of some of our most frequent groups.
- 3-5year olds feeding group: This program runs weekly over a 10-week term, and is facilitated by speech pathologists and dietitians. Parents accompany children aged 3-5years in a guided exploration of a range of new foods, using all of their senses. Mess is highly encouraged in this group, we advise avoiding wearing white clothes, or your favourite shirt in these sessions!
- 3-5years intensive group: This group is perfect for our little ones who have busy school terms, but want access to supports still. Running over several consecutive days in the school holidays, this group typically fits about half a term of therapy sessions in to just 1-2weeks! This group is a perfect follow on to our 3-5years weekly group, where children have settled in to the routine of feeding school and feel comfortable separating from parents or carers during the session, allowing big people to sneak next door for a grown-up chat with our dietitians to problem solve about mealtimes at home!
- 6-10year olds feeding group: In this group, our older children enjoy the independence of child-led feeding room as they explore a rainbow of foods, supported by speech pathology and occupational therapy. Parents or care givers join our dietitians in the neighbouring room for discussion of strategies to support eating at home, with the goal of making mealtimes fun and stress-free for everyone. This group runs weekly over a 10-week term, and usually after school hours.
- Food scientist and social cooking group: for children aged over 10years we take a more scientific approach to our food investigations, and enter the world of food science. Popping pearls, edible slime, colour changing noodles, and more! Using all of our senses, and our super-scientific factual describing words, this group focuses on building real-life cooking skills while we explore a range of foods as a team. This group is perfect for those with goals around expanding their tolerance of new foods, independence in daily living activities, and social skills, as we work together to make some delicious recipes.
- We’ve also able to deliver unique groups where we’ve identified the need, making mini groups like our food and move group (for children with goals around feeding and exercise physiology), or feeding playgroup (for parents and children with complex feeding journeys like tube feeding). If you’ve got a group you’d love to see, let us know!
- Unsure which feeding group is the right option for your family? Chat to our team! Our feeding team includes experienced therapists in a multidisciplinary team, who can help you navigate through which intervention option is right for your family.
Blog By Freya Vos, Dietitian
