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:
- To increase awareness of the oral mechanism
- To normalize oral tactile sensitivity
- To improve the precision of volitional movements of oral structures for speech production and/or chewing and clearing the oral cavity
- To increase differentiation of oral movements
- To improve feeding skills and nutritional intake
- 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