Responsive Feeding Therapy with Severe Feeding Challenges: Lessons from Responsive Tube Weaning (Guest Post 1)

From parents and even professionals at workshops, we are often asked, “Well, Responsive Feeding Therapy sounds good, but does it work for children with severe challenges, or who ‘can’t’ feel hunger due to medical issues or feeding tubes?”  In this first guest post of two, we explore responsive therapies where relationship, autonomy and trust are guiding principals. The lessons learned from these challenging cases can apply to every family struggling with a child who is an anxious or reluctant eater.                             Heidi Moreland graciously shares some of her thoughts around tube weaning. Heidi Liefer Moreland, MS, CCC-SLP, BCS-S, CLCKids who are on feeding tubes have often missed the early period of learning to eat. For some of them, the medical difficulties that led to the placement of the feeding tube may continue to impact their development.  On top of that, the feeding tube itself will impact hunger, making learning to eat seem like unnecessary work. Children who are fearful, who learn more slowly, or have more difficulty with physical coordination are at even greater risk of getting “stuck” in a pattern of fear, feeding refusal and family frustration.Unfortunately, that often leads to the belief that they can’t or won’t learn to eat in the way that other children do. Parents and other professionals feel that if they want to help children become oral eaters they have no alternative to direct instruction, bribing, or forceful feeding tactics.  The problem is that we know those strategies are harmful to a healthy relationship with food and result in the most fragile eaters...

What is “Responsive” Feeding Therapy?

Responsive feeding therapy is facilitating (re)discovery of internal cues, curiosity and strengths, while building skills (mastery).   “You don’t teach development, development is discovery.” Serena Wieder PhD (video on DIR Floortime)   Responsive therapies respond to each child, meeting the child where he or she is, not following a strict protocol without deviation.         By necessity, this occurs within a relationship. The primary is between the parent and the child, otherwise known as the “feeding relationship.” (Satter, Chatoor…)     Responsive feeding and feeding therapies also happen in relationship between the child and any adult feeding or providing food and meals to the child, and with any therapists involved in more formal therapies.     “Happiness is the most important factor at mealtimes and in therapy programs to help children develop feeding skills.” Suzanne Evans Morris SLP PhD Therapist and author, Pre-Feeding Skills     What do you think? What do responsive feeding therapies mean to you? Share this...

Feeding Therapy Approaches Differ When Children Struggle to Eat: Find the Right Help for Your Family

The article, When Your Baby Won’t Eat chronicles the heartbreak and triumph of one family’s journey with pediatric feeding struggles. The author and mother shares some of the confusion around finding the right help for her family. Virginia Sole-Smith writes, “Do you try to correct the behavior- training a child to eat well –Pavlov Style- or do you try to rediscover that primal urge and trust her to take it from there? It’s a divisive question among the doctors and therapists who work with children like Violet, as well as a debate unfolding consciously or not, around most kitchen tables in the country.” Feeding therapy programs differ; from the ABA, or applied behavioral approach on one end of the spectrum (the Pavlovian approach) where adults may hold a child’s hands down, may use “gentle mandibular guidance” and “escape extinction,” to a more responsive approach where the child’s reactions and behaviors are not viewed as behaviors to eliminate, but as vital communication and clues to guide treatment. Confusing for parents is that many treatment programs, even with opposing approaches, sound the same online, using words like “child-led” and “family-centered” to the point that parents might have no idea what is actually happening in therapy. Parents, we know it is beyond confusing; experts in the field of feeding kids often express opposite viewpoints, with OTs, SLPs, MDs, RDs, PhDs disagreeing on the best ways to treat pediatric feeding challenges. Consider the following sentiments, from folks in positions of authority. Which is “correct”? Never force your child to eat. You’re the parent, it’s the same as with seat-belts, just make them eat it! If your child gags the puree, scoop...

Facilitating (Not Forcing) Your Child’s Eating (Extreme Picky Eating Edition)

“I’m not forcing, I’m just aggressively facilitating…” I was watching a show on Netflix* when I caught this line, “I’m not forcing, I’m just aggressively facilitating.” My ears perked at the words facilitation and force, and of course made me think of children with extreme picky eating, of feeding, and the “aggressive facilitation” that can sometimes happen, even in feeding therapies. There is much research that suggests that when children are pressured or coerced to eat, overall intake, and intake of fruits and veggies decreases.  Here are a few examples… “…approximately half of all mothers and a greater proportion of fathers… ignore the child’s hunger signals and may use force, punishment, or inappropriate rewards to coerce the child to eat. These practices initially appear effective, but become counterproductive, resulting in poor adjustment of energy intake, consumption of fewer fruits and vegetables, and a greater risk of under- or overweight.” (Kerzner 2015) “…stringent parental controls can… limit children’s acceptance of a variety of foods and disrupt children’s regulation of energy intake by altering children’s responsiveness to internal cues of hunger and satiety.” (Brown & Ogden, 2004) Pressure to eat likely disrupts child’s ability to respond to internal cues of hunger and satiety (Carper et al., 2000) Pressure to eat … “exacerbate feeding problems and make mealtimes more negative for both parent and child.” (Harris 1992; Skuse 1993) Pressuring strategies could be implicated in the development and persistence of these problems (Farrow & Blissett, 2008) Pressure to eat predicted food avoidance behaviors: slow eating, emotional undereating, satiety responsiveness (Powell 2011) Parent prompts assoc w/ food avoidant behaviors, correcting for child emotionality and maternal...

Confessions of a Mommy Feeding Therapist

Working with families who struggle to feed their children on a daily basis, I often hear, “Your kids must be great eaters!” or “I bet you don’t have any trouble at the table with your kids!”.  Well, let me tell you, it isn’t quite that simple. As a feeding therapist, I am confident that what I am suggesting to parents will at least help, and not hinder, their child’s progress with eating. When I am working with someone else’s child, I can see their issues objectively. That makes it fairly easy to navigate next steps and to tease apart what may be going wrong. I have done loads of research and reading on the topic, wrote a book, and provide therapy for children from newborns to teenagers. I do trainings for other therapists, physicians, and students. So you would think I would have all the answers with my own three kids, right? Not so much. At home, things are a little more complicated. Do my kids sit at the table and eat at most meals? Yes. Are mealtimes a beautifully harmonious experience where all three of my children eat complicated dishes with a smile on their face? Hasn’t happened yet- I am still waiting. So what does a feeding therapist’s family mealtime actually look like?  Here is a window into my world: Setting:  We eat at our kitchen table for all meals, using family-style serving. I do a lot of “pile-on” and deconstructed meals and we don’t pre-plate the kids’ food. I work full-time and the kids have lots of activities, so our meals are fairly simple, and I get take-out about once a week....

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