Feeding Therapy Program
For Infants with Poor Suck and Children with Motor Impairment.
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Feeding Therapy in Children
Children experience problems in feeding and swallowing difficulties for various reasons. Premature infants and those born with congental problems such as heart defects may lack the ability to organize bahavior or the energy to suck effectively. Other children born with oral abnormalities, such as GERD, cleft palace, food allergies or intolerances, sensiry integration disorders, complex medical diagnoses, developmental delays, genetic syndromes require parents and health care professionals to implement compensation strategies so that child can ingest food.
Children who have underlying problems with motor control (e.g. cerebral palsy), Down's syndrome, children with oral hypersensitivities are common include autism, and difficulty learning everyday skills (e.g. mental retardation) can experience associated problems with eating or mastering utensil use.
Treatment options
Treatment needs to address oral-motor function, positioning, seating, muscle tone, and sensory-motor issues. Functional intervention approaches focus as directly as possible on training the specific swallowing or feeding task to minimize inappropriate and maladaptive behaviors. Questions to ask in order to develop an appropriate treatment plan include. When difficulties occur in any of these areas, request an oral motor assessment. Occupational therapist at Advanta Care will works at many level and difference techniques to help a child with feeding problems as the example below.
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What's Feeding therapy ?
Feeding therapy or oromotor therapy works on the oral skills necessary for proper speech and feeding development.
The previous discussions elaborated on how each structure (lip, tongue, jaw, cheek) affects oral motor control. Recognition of the patterns is essential to adequately baseline the individual's current skills, so that an appropriate plan of intervention can be developed. That plan will include mealtime interventions (positioning, handling techniques, adaptive equipment, etc.), as well as oral motor interventions to enhance control of the lips, cheeks, jaw and tongue for proper oromotor function.
Gum Massage for Oromotor Stimulation reference by ARK therapeutic