Feeding and Oral Motor Therapy

Feeding therapy is beneficial for infants and children presenting with:

  • breast and/or bottle-feeding difficulties (including infants with tongue and/or lip ties)
  • difficulty transitioning to baby food, table food, or cup-drinking
  • texture aversions (gagging on lumpy purees or certain table foods)
  • difficulty biting and chewing foods appropriately
  • poor weight gain
  • extremely limited food repertoire (accepts less than 30 foods consistently)
  • rigid mealtime behaviors (accepts specific brands of food only, particular about presentation or order of foods)

Oral Motor or Oral Placement Therapy is used to:

  1. To increase awareness of the oral mechanism
  2. To normalize oral tactile sensitivity
  3. To improve the precision of volitional movements of oral structures for speech production and/or chewing and clearing the oral cavity
  4. To increase differentiation of oral movements
  5. To improve feeding skills and nutritional intake
  6. To improve speech sound production to maximize intelligibility

Our therapists pull from a variety of feeding techniques across multiple theories and models of intervention. Visit our Meet The Team page for a list of trainings in feeding and oral placement therapy.

Our Specialties Include:

  • Poor weight gain
  • Feeding-tube dependence
  • Bottle or formula dependence
  • Extreme food selectivity
  • Mealtime tantrums and excessive meal durations
  • Inability or refusal to increase textures
  • Inability or refusal to self-feed