What Feeding Therapy Could Look Like

Feeding therapy – What it can look like!

While the overarching goal of feeding therapy is to help improve the diet by improving skills or decreasing sensory defensiveness to foods, therapy can look many different ways, depending on the child!  Typically, a feeding session would likely start with an activity to help get the child’s body ready to be seated. These could be doing wheel barrow walks, swinging, completing a calm activity they like to do (coloring, etc.) beforehand. It is important that the child be calm and ready to accept the food that is being looked at. Next, there is likely going to be a “set-up” routine to clean the table, get dishes, wash hands, etc. This would be the same across therapy sessions. Below are two ways to interact with foods once the prep work has been done!

For young children, similar to speech therapy, feeding can be incorporated into play (or play into feeding)! A child’s main job is to play to learn.  This is no different for foods.  Allowing a child to “play” or explore a food can tell them a lot about the food and what to expect.  It can also take the pressure off of eating it and allow them to go at their own pace to help decrease anxieties.  By allowing them to play, they can learn how the food is going to feel and predict how it may taste if they get the food close enough to smell it! Different types of “play” can be (but are not limited to):

• Using different pieces of foods to make bigger picture scenes
• Using foods as cars and driving them across the table/road
• Painting with pureed foods
• Having straw races with foods that roll

While younger children typically thrive with play, older children may want to take more of the “scientist” approach. With this approach, we talk with the child about different properties of the food and let them give “guesses” on what they think the food will taste like.  Different properties of the foods we may talk about are:

• What it looks like (color, shape, texture)
• What it feels like (cold, wet, hard, soft)
• What it sounds like (crunchy if you break it, swishy if you shake it)
• What it smells like (big smell, small smell, salty, sweet)
• And then we guess what it might taste like based on the above characteristics

This approach also allows a child to explore the food and start to pair characteristics of foods they already like with others.  This can help to increase what they are willing to taste or eat!  Again, if you have any concerns regarding feeding or any specific questions about your child, please feel free to contact us for more information or you can always find more information on the ASHA website as well!

-Amber-