Way To Grow Pediatric Therapy conducts evaluations for children of all ages presenting with a multitude of feeding and swallowing concerns. The comprehensive evaluation assesses a child’s oral motor skills, positioning, swallow function, and sensory processing related to eating and drinking. Our skilled therapists then generate a client-specific plan of care to appropriately target oral motor or sensory feeding concerns present. Therapy can focus on supports/strategies, open cup drinking, straw drinking, oral motor strengthening, spoon feeding, biting/chewing solids, and exploring different food groups and textures. Our therapy can be helpful to support restrictive eaters in developing a more supportive relationship with food, incorporate new foods into their daily routines, and decrease stress around mealtimes for the entire family.

Our infant feeding evaluations offer a collaborative, developmental approach to optimizing both breast and bottle feeding. Infant developmental feeding treatment is focused on supporting positive feeding experiences through a cue based, infant led approach, and will target bottle feeding, appropriate positioning, and helpful supports and strategies.

Common Needs impacted by Feeding/Mealtime Therapy

• Mealtimes feel stressful, frustrating, or overwhelming

• Your child eats a very small number of foods

• Tendency to avoid entire food groups or textures, and may become upset by particular smells, temperatures, or textures

• Frequent gagging, coughing, or choking with eating

• Eating takes a very long time

• Difficulty biting, chewing, moving food around in their mouth, or swallowing safely

• History of reflux, prematurity, tongue tie, or medical feeding challenges

• Difficulty gaining weight or growing as expected

• Heavy reliance on bottles, pouches, or supplements

• Difficulty transitioning to solids or age-appropriate foods

• Pocketing food in their cheeks or spit foods out often

Feeding therapy is offered at the Way to Grow Pediatric Therapy Center in Peoria Heights.