Feltz Therapy Services offers individual and group feeding sessions that address a variety of feeding concerns including but not limited to:

• Problem Feeders-  Children who exclude entire food groups and/or consume less than 25 foods.
• Reduced or limited intake
• Mealtime Tantrums
• Sensory Deficits-  Children who have difficulty tolerating different tastes, textures and temperatures of food.
• Oral Motor Deficits-When children have difficulty biting, chewing, and swallowing food.

As with all our therapies, feeding therapy will be tailored to meet the needs of your child.  Feeding therapy could involve oral-motor therapy or behavior feeding therapy or a combination of the two approaches.  Oral-motor therapy addresses the weak muscles in and around your child’s mouth.  Behavior therapy addresses the negative emotional responses to eating that usually arise from an underlying medical condition.  Addressing feeding problems is important for preventing or eliminating nutritional concerns, growth concerns including failure to thrive, unsafe swallowing which may lead to aspiration pneumonia and future poor eating habits/attitudes.

The feeding sessions are conducted by either a certified Occupational Therapist or a certified Speech-Language Pathologist.  The feeding group is modeled after the Sequential Oral Sensory Approach (S.O.S.).  The S.O.S. approach uses food chaining to gently guide children to interact with foods of different textures, consistencies, and temperatures.  Foods are selected from all major food groups.  Accommodations are made for children with food allergies.  Oral motor deficits are addressed through exercises and through the foods presented to the children.