On June 16, 2020, Therapro hosted an overwhelmingly popular webinar presented by Dr. Kate Barlow on the topic of Oral Motor Treatment Strategies. As one viewer stated:
“This was a totally amazing webinar on oral motor feeding. I learned so much information, and Kate was a wonderful speaker.” DSM
Dr. Barlow is an Assistant Professor at American International College (see her full bio here). In part one of this blog series we recapped some great takeaways from Dr. Barlow’s June 16 webinar; one of those takeaways was that all children should be screened for feeding disorders. In this blog post we will dive deeper into the screening and assessment strategies Dr. Barlow shared with viewers during the webinar.
Dr. Barlow shared great tips, resources, and strategies for appropriately screening and assessing feeding disorders, noting that a good assessment is the driving force behind a good treatment plan. Dr. Barlow identified key areas to assess: lip closure and strength, reaction to gum massage, posterior cheek strength, tongue range of motion and strength, jaw strength, motor planning, and sensory assessments when appropriate. Dr. Barlow shared a decision tree that she created, explaining that it is a great way to ensure all relevant areas are covered during the screening and assessment process. With this she highlighted key questions to ask caregivers during the screening process, like the three Ps: “pain, past medical history and poop.” Other recommended questions to ask included:
- Is the child eating more than 10 foods?
- How is the child being fed?
- Where does the child eat?
Dr. Barlow’s experience in the area of pediatric feeding was clearly evident in some great pointers she offered when assessing feeding difficulties. For example:
- Always ask about teeth brushing because of the correlation between difficulties with brushing teeth and difficulties with feeding.
- Be sure to check that the child’s nutrition is adequate even if they are at an appropriate weight.
- Monitoring oxygen saturation, temperature changes, and respiratory rates during feeding can give you clear indicators of difficulty during feeding.
Viewers left this webinar with an awareness of how crucial it is to understand the deficit areas that are causing the feeding problem. That understanding is a key piece in developing an appropriate treatment plan. We will discuss Dr. Barlow’s treatment recommendations in part three of this three part recap of the Oral Motor Treatment Strategies webinar.
A recommended resource for evaluating sensory based difficulties is the The Sensory Processing Measure. The home form is completed by a child’s parent or caregiver and provides norm-referenced standard scores for two higher level integrative functions-praxis and social participation-and five sensory systems – visual, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular.