Mission
Our mission is to provide educational tools and resources that serve the needs of children with feeding difficulties, their families and the professionals who work with them.
Vision
All children and families will have safe and happy mealtimes.
Our Key Initiatives: E.A.T.
What You Should Know:
We are a group of parents that realize when mealtimes aren’t going well for infants and young children, it is cause for concern and very stressful for families. Mealtimes should be opportunities for bonding and should foster positive relationships between children and their families. Most people believe eating is instinctual; however, that is only true for the first month of life. For some infants and children, feeding is a painful, not pleasurable experience. The smell, taste, texture, and even presence of food may cause anxiety, food selectivity or food refusal. Often, this is expressed through head turning, gagging, choking, coughing, or vomiting. In extreme cases, some children struggling to eat may need feeding tubes to provide or supplement their daily nutritional needs.
No Parent Should Feel Alone. Through our own experiences, we understand that feeding influences every aspect of a child’s overall well-being: social, emotional, mental, and physical. Parents need a transdisciplinary team of medical professionals who will collaborate to maximize a child’s eating potential and will provide support for the family as a whole.
Our Vision for the Future
Families
- When a family reports their child is having difficulty eating, their voice is heard and their child is evaluated immediately.
- Families are directed to experienced specialists who work together as a team to determine the cause of the feeding issue.
- Intervention is individualized, respectful and supports a positive parent-child relationship.
- The parent is a valued member of the treatment team.
- The end result is a child who enjoys eating without experiencing fear, anxiety or pain.
The Medical Professional
- Medical Professionals receive comprehensive training and education to manage complex pediatric feeding disturbances.
- Care is interdisciplinary and the child is assessed and treated holistically.
- Medical Professionals create a treatment plan that matches a child’s skill level, honors the child’s cues and is realistic for families to implement.
Research
- Research identifies the root causes of feeding issues.
- Evidence-based best practices for treating infants and children with feeding disturbances are determined.
- Results reduce or eliminate the longevity, severity and unnecessary suffering related to pediatric feeding disturbances.
Guiding Principles
- Families count!
- No family should pioneer the feeding journey on their own.
- Every child and family has individual capabilities and values that are accepted and honored.
- All intervention is individualized, respectful and supports a positive parent-child relationship.
- A dynamic partnership between the child, parents, professionals and the community supports successful intervention.
- Mealtimes can be positive experiences.
- Parents and professionals recognize, respect and respond to each child’s feeding and mealtime cues.
- Adults provide the structure and support within which a child is able to learn to eat based on the child’s ability.
- Early identification is the key to prevention and an important first step in appropriate assessment and intervention.
- Every child and family deserves integrated, coordinated care facilitated by their primary care physician.
- There are many effective approaches to care and treatment. No single approach meets the needs of all children and families.
- Services have a strong theoretical foundation and meet the current standards of best-practice as reflected in available research and expert clinical opinion.
- Professionals share their research knowledge and experience, and help parents select treatment options that match the needs of the child and family as a whole.