Take the Bite Out of Mealtime

Our Children’s House at Baylor offers unique feeding program.

Sitting down to a meal with your young children is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Sometimes it’s a fun adventure—especially when your child is learning to eat and half of the food ends up on mom, dad or the child.

But when a child is unable to eat normally or is disruptive when eating, mealtime can become frustrating for everyone. Our Children’s House (OCH) at Baylor, a 53-bed pediatric hospital on the campus of Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, offers a special feeding program for children to help bring the joy back to mealtime.

Intensive Treatment
The feeding program combines speech and occupational therapy with behavior modification to evaluate a child’s eating patterns and develop a treatment plan. Program goals include:

• Weaning children off feeding tubes and moving them to oral eating.
• Increasing the volume and variety of foods a child will eat.
• Breaking disruptive eating patterns and establishing good eating behaviors.
• Ensuring the child is getting enough calories and nutrition to support proper growth and development.

“We treat a variety of feeding disorders, from children who have difficulty swallowing [dysphagia] to those who exhibit behavioral problems when they eat,” says Laura Austin, Ph.D., a psychologist on the staff at OCH and team leader for the feeding program.

Growing Strong
Most of the children are developmentally delayed and have oral-motor and sensory processing weaknesses; many were born prematurely. Others have genetic syndromes, gastrointestinal problems or autism.

“If they’re not getting the calories and nutrition they need to grow, it’s going to affect not only their stature and their weight, but eventually their brain and skeletal development,” notes Tracey Killgore, program manager.

After a thorough feeding assessment, the therapists recommend various treatment options.

What distinguishes the OCH program from others across the country is that it offers inpatient, outpatient and day-patient treatment, and features a strong behavioral emphasis, in addition to the focus on improving oral-motor and sensory processing abilities. In all OCH feeding therapy, there is an equal emphasis on treatment for the child and education and training for caregivers.

“Our goal is to have each child reach his or her highest developmental potential and exhibit eating patterns similar to other kids the same age,” Dr. Austin says.

By Deborah Paddison

For information about the feeding program at Our Children’s House at Baylor Dallas, call 1-800-4BAYLOR.