Services
Feeding and swallowing
Pediatric feeding disorder, sometimes called paediatric dysphagia, is when a child’s feeding skills are not appropriate for their age and that leads to less food intake.
Signs families often notice
- Gagging, coughing, or food left in the mouth
- Difficulty chewing or moving food around the mouth
- Needing several swallows to clear a bite
- Long meals, food avoidance, or overstuffing
- Swallowing food whole, or a delay before swallowing
- Trouble with straw drinking or an open cup
- Difficulty latching, or popping on and off the bottle
- Hypersensitivity, trouble keeping weight on, or a need for a feeding tube
The first feeding visit
Every first feeding appointment is a bedside swallow exam. After a thorough history, your clinician offers different liquid and food textures and watches how your child chews, moves food, takes food from a spoon, sucks, sips, and swallows.
We look at how the structures move, the range of motion, and the coordination. Most importantly, we decide which textures are safe right now and which are not.
Goals then focus on strength, coordination, and expanding the textures your child can eat safely.
How treatment works
Strategies are chosen for your child. We follow evidence-based ideas, including the principles of motor learning. Real food and liquids matter, because the brain learns the movements of chewing, drinking, and swallowing by doing them.
By changing texture, size, and type of food, we can strengthen the muscles used in feeding, increase range of motion, and build coordination. Those changes can make eating more efficient, increase how much a child takes in a feed, and shorten meals.
We watch for signs that a texture is not safe and change the plan so your child can work toward more complex textures without being put at risk. Teaching families is essential, because you are the one feeding your child several times a day.
Areas we can work on
- Bottle feeding
- Breastfeeding
- G-tube or NG-tube weaning
- Introducing solid food
- Thickener weaning
- Cup drinking
- Straw drinking
- New textures
- Chewing
- Shorter oral feeds
Swallow studies
We monitor your child during feeds, and we do not have x-ray vision. If your child can have a swallow study, we recommend it. We have attended swallow studies with clients and coordinated with staff at McMaster Children’s Hospital. That information shapes goals and the risk-benefit decisions.
If you already have a swallow study report, please send it before the first session. Swallow studies can be hard to qualify for, and one is not required to start service.