The clinicians at OT4KIDs use the Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) approach to feeding strategies to promote healthy relationship with feeding and to increase the child’s ability to participate in feeding with increased ease and comfort.
The SOS Feeding approach encompasses a multi-disciplinary type of feeding therapy that utilizes a systematic approach to address both the sensory processing and the oral motor skills, grounded in the abilities and capacities of feeding needed to eat a wide variety of food groups and textures.
The SOS Approach focuses on increasing a child’s comfort level by exploring and learning about the different properties of food. The program allows a child to interact with food in a playful, non-stressful way, beginning with the ability to tolerate the food in the room and in front of him/her, then moving on to managing the smell of the foods, learning about how foods feel on the body and in the mouth, and then enjoying tasting and eating new foods following the ‘Steps to Eating’.
The SOS Feeding approach is appropriate for children who:
- May eat a limited variety of foods (picky eaters)
- May eat a food for some time then refuse that food even after taking a break from it
- May refuse entire categories of food groups, or texture groups (i.e. hard foods, soft cubes, puree textures)
- May eat something different than the rest of the family at almost every meal
Skills Targeted:
- Sensory processing skills
- Oral motor skills
- Learning/problem solving
- Relationship with food
- Comfort and confidence with eating