Pediatric Feeding Therapy in Fort Smith & Fayetteville, AR

You can likely tell if your child needs feeding therapy if you see that they struggle with latching, nursing, chewing, or swallowing. Feeding therapy aims to help children improve their oral motor skills for effective eating and drinking. It also aims to help children who struggle with getting enough nutrients to keep their bodies healthy due to food aversions. If your child struggles with any of those activities, you should speak with their pediatrician about your concerns to see if you can get a referral for feeding therapy.

If you still aren’t sure if feeding therapy is the right treatment for your child, you can check out our Developmental Milestones resource on our website. We break down all of the milestones your child should achieve between birth and age five so that you can determine if your child is on track or if they need a little more support to reach their developmental goals related to feeding.

The absolute best way to know if your child needs feeding therapy is to schedule an evaluation with our experts at Little Hands at Play. We can complete a thorough evaluation of your child’s abilities and limitations to determine if they are on track developmentally or if they could use extra support from our team to be able to enjoy mealtimes.

Pediatric feeding therapy can address a wide range of feeding and swallowing challenges that affect your child’s ability to eat safely and comfortably. Some of the most common types of feeding disorders that our experts can treat include: 

• Oral motor disorders – when a child struggles to use and coordinate the muscles in their mouth and throat for effective chewing and swallowing. 
• Dysphagia – when a child has trouble swallowing food or drinks correctly and often coughs, chokes, or refuses food out of fear of choking. 
• Sensory processing disorder – when a child has a strong aversion to certain textures, flavors, scents, colors, or even temperatures of food. 
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) – a condition where stomach contents come back up into the esophagus, which can cause discomfort. 
• Developmental delays – where a child struggles to transition from liquids to solids, or even use utensils effectively to eat their food

Our expert pediatric feeding therapists have the training and experience to help your child build their feeding skills for enjoyable mealtimes. We’ll work with you and your child to help them master feeding so they can enjoy a wide variety of healthy foods, safely and confidently. 

During a pediatric feeding therapy session, our expert feeding therapist will work with your child on a variety of exercises and activities depending on their specific needs. For example, if your child struggles with chewing or swallowing, we may do evidence-based exercises or stretches to help them improve their control of the muscles in their mouth and throat.

We’ll also work with your child on eating and drinking during the sessions. At Little Hands at Play, we have a Feeding Lab with a variety of different types of foods that we can use during feeding therapy sessions, including hot and cold liquids and foods of all different textures, tastes, and colors. We may also ask you to bring in some foods that you have at home that your child likes, or foods they struggle with, to work on the skills needed to eat those foods successfully as well.

The exact actions we’ll take during your child’s pediatric feeding therapy session depend on the specific challenges they’re facing and what skills we are trying to improve. Your child’s feeding therapist will be able to give you a better idea of the types of activities we will do, and things you can do to help your child at home, at their evaluation appointment.

Feeding therapy addresses your child’s ability to nurse, chew, and swallow effectively. Because of this, it’s often very easy for parents to see that their child is making progress during their therapy sessions with our experts. This is simply because your child will find it easier to eat and drink as therapy progresses, and things that they struggled with before therapy will start to be less of a challenge.

There is no hard and fast rule for how long feeding therapy will take. Some children will gain the feeding skills they need quickly, and others will need more support to reach their developmental goals. But we do know that any progress is better than no progress, and the more your child works on their feeding skills with our therapists and at home, the sooner they will see results from therapy.

We may not be able to give you an exact estimate of how much time it will take. But as therapy progresses, we can explain to you what skills they have gained and how far they have come. And ultimately, you will be able to see for yourself as your child gains more confidence at mealtimes and starts to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods more easily.

Pediatric feeding therapy and speech therapy can both address your child’s oral motor skills. These skills have to do with controlling the muscles in the mouth and throat, such as the tongue, lips, and soft palate. Often, pediatric speech-language pathologists are the experts who deliver feeding therapy because of their detailed knowledge of these oral motor skills.

But there is a key difference between these two treatments: feeding therapy focuses on oral motor skills for the purpose of eating and drinking safely, while speech therapy focuses on oral motor skills for the purpose of speaking clearly and fluently.

Often, children who need feeding therapy also need speech therapy, and children who need speech therapy may also need feeding therapy. Think of it this way: if your child has trouble moving their tongue to the back of their throat to make sounds (like “k,” or “hard g”), they may also have trouble moving food to the back of their throat to swallow it. This isn’t always the case, but it can happen.

Even though these two treatments can focus on the same area of the body, they do so with very different purposes. And both feeding therapy and speech therapy have their own tools and techniques to help children gain their developmental skills.

Our pediatric feeding therapists use different techniques to help children build oral motor skills, overcome sensory sensitivities, and develop positive associations with food and mealtimes. Some of the ways we do this include: 

• Oral motor exercises – to strengthen the muscles in the mouth so that children can successfully chew and swallow their foods and drinks. 
• Sensory activities – to help children gradually improve their tolerance for foods of different tastes, textures, temperatures, etc. 
• Modeling – eating or drinking with the child to demonstrate how to do it well, and to make children feel more comfortable with trying themselves. 
• Positive reinforcement – to encourage children to try new foods and praise them when they do, without forcing them. 
• Mealtime strategies – helping children learn strategies for eating and drinking, such as taking smaller bites and pacing themselves, or taking breaks between bites. 
• Parent guidance – to help parents learn how to implement feeding strategies at home so you can support your child between therapy sessions. 

The specific techniques we will use depend on your child’s needs, which we can discuss with you after their evaluation with our expert feeding therapists. 

Pediatric feeding therapy can help children overcome picky eating by working with them to build up a tolerance for a variety of foods. Oftentimes, picky eating comes from an underlying challenge such as sensory processing disorder, which makes children especially sensitive to the different tastes and textures of food. Picky eating can also happen if your child has struggled with choking, gagging, or a condition like gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), all of which can cause negative associations with food and lead to anxiety around eating or drinking.

Our expert feeding therapists will work with your child to help make trying new foods feel safe and fun. We can do exercises to build their oral motor skills, activities to reduce their sensory sensitivity, and offer tons of positive reinforcement to help them build more positive associations with mealtimes.

We can also give you recommendations on things you can try at home to help your child continue to make progress between sessions. This may include establishing routines, changing how much food you give your child at a time, or being sure to always offer them a “safe” food (one you know they will eat) in addition to foods they may be less willing to have.

The best therapy schedule for your child’s needs will be determined after their evaluation by our expert pediatric feeding therapists. While we generally schedule children for sessions once per week, it may be better for your child to attend sessions twice per week if they need more support to achieve their developmental milestones. Our team will work with you to find the best schedule that fits both your child’s needs and your family’s availability.

It’s best to keep in mind that the more often your child attends therapy sessions and practices their developmental skills, the sooner they will achieve results. It is similar to trying to learn a new instrument. Would you learn faster if you attended a music class for an hour once per week, or if you attended multiple times per week and spent time practicing in between classes?

When it comes to pediatric feeding therapy, the more often our experts can work with your child, the better. We may also give you things to do at home with your child between sessions that will help them continue to achieve their developmental goals for lasting success.

Preparing your child for their first feeding therapy session can help them feel more comfortable and willing to interact with their therapist. The easiest way to do this is to simply talk to your child about what to expect in a simple way that makes feeding therapy sound fun. You might tell them that they’re going to play with someone who can help them with a challenge they have. Example: “Your therapist is going to play games and do other fun activities with you to help you learn how to chew your food more easily.”

You can reassure your child that you will be there with them, and that their therapist is very friendly and can’t wait to help them. You can also encourage their curiosity by finding out if they have any questions about food, eating, or drinking, and agreeing that you should ask their therapist together to get the answer.

The key is to make it sound like a fun, positive activity that your child will enjoy because it will help them. Offering gentle encouragement and letting them know that it is something you are happy about will help set the tone for a successful first session.