Ep 335: The #1 Way to Transform Your Pediatric Feeding Evaluations

So when you start listening to what parents are actually telling you, you'll uncover motor, sensory, and even structural concerns without needing to see the child take a single bite. Hey, friends, and welcome back to the Untethered Podcast. I'm your host, Holly Balkan. This is episode 335, and today we're diving into something that's super, super simple but frequently missed in pediatric feeding evaluations and screenings. Really? So whether you're brand new to feeding or you're already seeing kids, there's one crucial thing I want to put on your radar. And once you hear it, I think it's going to change how you look at your next screening or evaluation even. And yes, this is also your heads up that next week I'm running a free three day live training that dives much deeper into this and walks you through how to screen pediatric feeding cases step by step. But first, I've got a quick tip that can shift how you do this work starting today. So let's dive in.

Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Holly Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcast podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway tether, dural tissue, and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener as we jump into today's episode. Remember to listen with correct oral rest. Posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart.

Breathe through your nose. Let's get started. So here's the truth, okay? Most of us were taught to watch the child eat and then decide what's going on. But in the real world, especially with little ones, you might not even get to see the meat. Especially for a screening, that's a little tricky, right? And that is why I teach my students that like your intake form, which obviously on a screening you don't have a full blown intake form, but you can always maybe have a checklist or something parents can fill out, even just for a screening. But for an eval, your intake form is not just paperwork, it's actually the first layer of your complete evaluation. And so that's what I want to break down because what you ask on your intake can change a whole lot for you. And so I'm going to give you three Questions that you can ask today that will reveal red flags pretty quickly. And I know people don't love that word red flags, but I use it because we all. Y' all know what I'm talking about when I say that, right? So let's just, like, you know, grin and bear. Okay? Okay. So number one, what position does your child eat in at home? Most people don't realize. When I say people, I mean, like you and I, therapists, SLP o ts feeding, therapists don't realize. And parents. Right. Especially. And, you know, everyday people just don't realize that posture, our posture can impact everything from breathing to safe swallowing. Like, if you have ever taken anything that I have done or maybe you've hung around an OT who you've heard say this. But, like, we always say, like, what we see on the hips, we see on the lips. Because that posturing of the pelvis, is it. Is it tilted anteriorly, posteriorly? Like, are they sitting on the edge of their seat and kind of, like, slouching back? Are they sitting really forward and, like, pushing their chest forward? Like, how, you know, are they kind of falling to one side? You know, it's like, what is their positioning? Like, what is their core strength? Like, what are the hips doing? Because what we see on the hips, we see on the lips. And those lips, what's going on in the mouth is going to be directly tied to what we see happening on the body. Okay, that's what I mean by that. So that's, number one, what position does a child eat in at home? Okay, number two, how long does mealtime usually take? If a toddler is taking, like, 45 or more minutes to eat? That's a clinical clue right there. That's not just a parenting style, so pay attention to that. Number three, are there any sounds that you hear when your child is eating or drinking? Right. Noisy breathing, gulping, coughing. Like, these could be overlooked airway red flags. And so when you start listening to what parents are actually tell you, you'll uncover motor, sensory, and even structural concerns without needing to see the child take a single bite. So this is a short and sweet episode today because I wanted to bring you some, like, really helpful, like, quick wins in an episode. And so this is kind of just like a boom. Like, hey, that was really cool. Let me add that and start to ask about these things, because as you dive in, I talked about, like, the positioning, but, like, the length of the meal time. Why would that be happening? Well, maybe the child's having some sensory, oral, motor struggles. Maybe they're having a hard time breaking the food down. It's very fatiguing for them. Maybe they don't like what they're eating and there's some avoidance in there. Maybe they are not actually feeling hunger cues and they're not super hungry and they're not super motivated. Maybe their sensory system's overwhelmed. Maybe there could be so many different things going on. But like the fact that this child is still sitting it, sitting and eating after 45 minutes, that's, that is a clue right there. Like that's not, you know, 20 minutes is usually a pretty good, good time and that's a long time for even some toddlers. Okay. So, and then as far as the sounds go, I mentioned like those sounds if, when a child's eating and drinking, if there's noisy breathing, gulping, coughing, whatever, like those are airway, those are airway hints. And so we're going to dive deeper into this, like I was saying. But I want to kind of wrap this up in a pretty bow for you. Even though this is like a super, super short episode today, if you only take away one thing from this super short episode, I want it to be this. A great feeding evaluation starts before the child ever enters the room. Okay? And so if you know what to ask, you can get like 80% of the information that you need just from the intake. And then once you see them eat and you ask them follow up questions, you get the rest of the information you need. Okay? So anyways, next week I'm going to walk you through exactly how I use my pediatric feeding screening packet to do this kind of work with confidence and speed. Because you're going to look at and be like, well that thing is that's got 50, that's got 50 of the most common symptoms. Like, how am I supposed to do this in two to three minutes? I'm going to show you how. So we're going to, we're going to hang together, I'm going to bring the cases, you just bring yourself. I'll give you the screener. We actually have the screener in multiple languages, but I do this training in English. But we're going to get deeper into these questions, show you what to listen for and look for and I'll even walk you through, like I said, the real cases so you can see like how it looks on a, on a kiddo who does not have any feeding issues and how it looks on a kiddo who does have some sensory oral motor delays going on. And so if this episode got your wheels turning even though it was so super short. Make sure you grab your seat. Go to www. You have to put that in.feedthepedes.com backslash training it is totally free. I'm doing it live and it's designed to give you practical tools that you can use right away. Okay, this is happening next week, September 8th through 10th, so join me. Thank you so much for hanging with me today. I know it was short and sweet, but I hope you walk away from this episode already thinking differently about how you approach feeding evals. And if you're ready for more, I can't wait to see you inside the free training next week. I'll catch you there.

Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotox, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your.

Social media platform platforms. You can access free resources and all.

I offer@halibalkin.com or pop over to Holly Balkan on Instagram to get all the latest updates.