Embark on a journey to improve your child's feeding skills with our specialized feeding occupational therapy sessions at OT Kids!

Using the Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) approach to feeding, our experienced therapists guide children through a structured process designed to expand their comfort with various foods and textures. Through engaging activities and exercises, we focus on building oral motor skills and increasing tolerance to new foods, empowering your child to enjoy a wider variety of nutritious options.

With our supportive and child-centered approach, we aim to foster positive mealtime experiences and promote healthy eating habits for life.

🍓Our Feeding Approach 🥝

How does 'SOS' work?

The Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) Approach is based on typical developmental steps in feeding creating a systematic desensitization through a hierarchy of skills and behaviors necessary for children to progress with eating various textures. Some examples of the progression of the hierarchy include: tolerating food in the room, on the plate, near the hand, on the arm, near the face, on the lips, on the tongue, progressing to biting, chewing, and swallowing the foods.

During our feeding session

Your child and I (parents are welcomed also) each have a plate infront of us and one at a time, we will go through each food as we put them on our plate - talking a lot about what the food feels like, looks like, might taste like, what the temperature is, etc.

I will help your child progress through the “Steps to Eating” in a fun, child-led, and systematic way! I will be facilitating play ideas with the food and mimic with them with positive and happy expressions. It's very important not to mimic negative facial expressions or use any type of negative language towards food/eating.

✅ How do I prepare for a feeding session?

For the first session, please prepare 3 preferred foods and 3 non-preferred foods to have as a “snack” during our evaluation. Please vary the texture and type of foods prepared (i.e. crunchy, soft, puree, vegetable, fruit, protein, carbohydrate, etc.) An evaluation will be provided after the inital session where I explain the food types we will want to focus on.

In follow up sessions, I will request a “menu” of about 6-10 foods that link together by similar properties (color, shape, texture, etc.) We need just enough food to explore and try a few bites of each food type so you do not need to make large quantity of each of the requested foods. The goal of this meal is exploration, learning and comfort with foods, not necessarily to 'get full'. It's likely your child will still need to eat more after our sessions.

🌟 Behind the Scenes of an In-Home Feeding Therapy Session 🌟

As an occupational therapist, I’ve seen firsthand how empowering a positive mealtime experience can be for both the child and the family. Whether we’re working on picky eating, oral motor skills, or food aversion, these sessions are designed to build trust, reduce stress, and make mealtime fun again!

Start Your Child's Journey Today

Book an FREE 20-minute consultation with our lead OT to get started.

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