THE MEALTIME PARTNERS PROGRAM

Our popular Mealtime Partners Program, open to parents and professionals, is based on the premise that children are born with the inner ability to eat and to grow appropriately. During infancy they learn to interact with adults as they expand their eating skills and enjoy both the food and the mealtime environment. Some children experience a disruption of this normal cycle because of difficulties in physical, sensory, structural, and environmental skills and opportunities. Coordination problems may interfere with the ability to suck, swallow or chew food. Sensory processing difficulties can contribute to stress and discomfort during eating. Gastrointestinal discomfort contributes a negative association between food and the desire to eat. Parents and therapists often respond to the child’s difficulty with eating or eating refusal with pressure and an attempt to control the type and amount of food that the child eats. Battles for control disrupt the entire mealtime and reduce eating to an unpleasant contest for everyone.

Mealtime Partners is based on a trust model of intervention, which is reflected at every level of the program. Children inherently want to eat and want to interact with the partners who share the meal with them. When they do not, something is getting in the way. Identification of the roadblocks that limit the development of eating skills and comfort is essential in helping children return to their natural desire to be part of mealtimes. The mealtime and the child’s comfort and desire to learn to eat are the most important elements of the Mealtime Partners Program. Strategies designed to increase physical coordination, sensory processing and integration, gastrointestinal comfort, communication and oral-motor control are incorporated to support the child’s eating skill and desires. All children can participate in a shared mealtime that is happy and rewarding for both the child and family.

Each level of the program provides information and concrete strategies to support the child, parent and therapist in the following components of a mealtime program:

• Beliefs and Attitudes

• Oral Feeding

• Mealtime Communication

• Sensory Processing

• Gastrointestinal Comfort

• Positioning and Movement

• Mealtime Partnership

The Mealtime Partners Program includes three levels of learning and involvement with the concepts and strategies underlying mealtimes for infants and children.

1. INTRODUCTORY LEVEL
Mealtime Partners Starter Kit
2. FOUNDATIONAL LEVEL
Mealtime Partners Workshop
3. ADVANCED LEVEL
Mealtime Partners Outreach Program

The three levels of the program are completed in sequence, but have intrinsic value at each phase of the program. Parents and professionals may go as far into the programmed sequence as they desire.