Treating Complex Feeding and Swallowing Issues in Children: Targeted Sensory, Motor, and Behavior Techniques for Dysphagia, Autism, Cerebral Palsy and other Developmental Delays – Angela Mansolillo and Jessica Hunt

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…Do you work with special needs children who cry or scream, throw food, refuse to sit at a table and eat, or refuse to try new foods?

…Do you know children who eat only a limited number of foods or only eat the same food over and over?

…Is going to a restaurant out of the question for the families you work with?

By the time you see a family dealing with complex feeding issues, they’re often in severe distress and extreme dysfunction. They’re exasperated and frustrated from bribing their child to eat, and they have read every parenting blog on how to help a “picky eater.” They just want their child to get the nutrients they need to thrive.

After working with families and complex feeding issues for over 17 years, I’ve discovered the interventions that work. And now I want to show you the customized tools, strategies and interventions you need to improve treatment outcomes.

Join me for my new online course, and I’ll give you step-by-step guidance on how you can make mealtimes more peaceful and positive. Through comprehensive lessons, case studies, and video case examples, you will learn exactly what you need to do to successfully treat feeding difficulties in children with Autism, Cerebral Palsy and more.

You’ll walk away with advanced techniques to:

• Evaluate the causes of mealtime difficulties: behavior, sensory, oral motor, or a combination
• Increase range of foods, decrease food jags
• Improve jaw strength and decrease ineffective lip closure, or poor tongue lateralization
• Integrate deep breathing and proprioceptive input to address self-regulation at the table
• Increase self-regulation around feeding
• Use food play and exploration to improve food acceptance
• Educate parents and caregivers to promote carryover at home
• … and so much more

Don’t wait to join me for this top-tier training on Treating Complex Feeding & Swallowing Issues.

Yours in learning,
Jessica Hunt, OTR/L

What will I learn?

Through intriguing videos, case studies, and masterful explanation, you will learn how to apply the latest findings from research to your treatment protocols in practical, effective ways.

This intensive session will provide you the knowledge you need to:

• Evaluate how sensory processing, behavior and oral motor skills impact or interfere with each child’s ability to eat
• Role play how to implement sensory techniques during and prior to meal times to address difficulities such as not wanting to touch certain foods or sit at the table
• Implement oral motor exercises and strategies to promote feeding patterns such as rotary chewing pattern, lip closure and tongue lateralization
• Explore the misconceptions about feeding that impact special needs children
• Understand the behaviors that interfere with eating and devise strategies to address the behavior
• Support and guide parents and caregivers through often emotional or stressful meal times

Program Outline

Complex Feeding Issues: Sensory, Motor, and Behavior Techniques for Autism, Cerebral Palsy and other Developmental Delays

Join Jessica Hunt, OTR/L, as she walks you step by step through the tools and strategies you need to successfully treat complex feeding issues. Together, you’ll explore common misconceptions, the overlap of sensory processing skils (including oral motor skills and behaviors), and review the key takeaways of normal development.

The Complexities of Feeding

• Definition and prevalence – new information; move toward Pediatric Feeding Disorder
• Overlap of sensory processing skills, oral motor skills and behaviors
• Normal developmental key points
• Neurological foundations
• Trauma, feeding and impact on brain
  • NICU and medical trauma, NG Tubes, trachotmesty, etc.
  • Negative experience around feeding gagging, retching, pain with eating

Evaluation of Feeding Skills

• Differentiate between sensory overload and behaviors during feeding
• Activity analysis of feeding – Evaluation videos and group analysis
• Information obtained – what questions to ask
• Oral motor evaluation – jaw, lips, tongue strength; range of motion for feeding
• Hands-on draw to learn lab

Sensory Integration Strategies

• Research-backed sensory play-based approach
  • Decrease sensory over-responsivity to foods
  • Use food exploration/cooking for older kids
• Self-regulation to engage body during feeding
  • Core engagement
  • Breathing exercises
  • Therapeutic use of music
  • Heavy work

Oral Motor Skills

• Lab – Oral motor exercises, kineseotaping, stretching
• Children who don’t swallow safely – saliva management, increase swallowing

Food in Therapy

Taste Lab – Sensory feedback and motor requirement needed for each food texture

• Progression of food texture
• Match food presented in therapy to child’s sensory needs and motor skills
• Nutritional considerations

Behaviors During Mealtimes: Environmental Strategies to Set Children Up for Success

• Manage common mealtime behaviors – throwing foods, not sitting, crying during mealtimes
• Increase cooperation using the “just right challenge”
• Shift between treatment frameworks
• How to use the “feeding roadmap”

Special Considerations

• Autism
• Cerebral Palsy
• Down Syndrome
• Children who don’t eat by mouth/G-Tube
• Medically complex children

Promote Carry-Over At Home

• Educate parents who are stressed and in survival mode
• Help families have realistic expectations
• Easy-to-implement home programs that parents will do
• Help parents to change the relationship between child and food

FREE Bonus Seminar 

Complex Feeding & Swallowing Problems in Children: Discover the Underlying Causes of Food Refusal for a More Targeted Treatment Plan

This essential bonus seminar will give you successful strategies for identifying the underlying etiology of dysphagia. You’ll hear the evidence base for specific therapies, including oral-motor techniques, behavioral interventions, nutritional interventions, and strategies for respiratory control, are evaluated.

Respiratory System Development and Functions

• You can’t eat if you can’t breathe
• Breathing/swallowing Coordination and Discoordination
• Role of pulmonary clearance
• Aspiration and aspiration pneumonia
• Incorporate respiratory indicators in evaluation
• Exercise Interventions for breathing/swallow discoordination and respiratory insufficiencies

Pharyngeal Dysphagia

• Clinical assessment matters!
• Instrumental assessment options
• Improving pharyngeal swallow function
• Interventions to decrease aspiration risk
• Dietary modifications — texture modifications and thick liquids pros and cons
• Oral hygiene
• Interactive case review — What your client’s gut is telling you

GI System Development

• GI system and respiration connection
• Reflux and reflux disease
• Constipation
• Allergies
• Dietary and lifestyle interventions
• Food allergies and the gut
• Positioning and sleep

Oral Motor Function

• Postural stability matters
• Oral muscles are not skeletal muscles
• Exercise Interventions — are they right for your client

Sensory Processing and Eating

• Food as therapy
• The role of taste and smell
• Strategies — how to expand food repertoire

When It Really Is Behavior

• What’s the behavior’s form AND function
• Examining the feeding environment
• Finding the right reinforcement strategy
• Behavioral intervention in 5 steps: Environment, hunger, reinforcement, shaping and parent training
• Interactive case review — when it’s behavior…but not just behavior

Weaning From Tube Feeding

• Priming the gut
• Rapid vs. gradual weans
• Blended diets
• Strategies for tube feed weaning
• Blended diets — when and who

More Nutritional Interventions for Pharyngeal Dysphagia, GI Development, Oral Motor Function, Sensory Processing, Behavior and Tube Feeding

• Nutrition and immune system function
• Supplements
• Which special diets are really special
• Techniques to improve nutrition