Episode 318: Feed The Peds®: The Mission with Hallie Bulkin, MA CCC-SLP, CMT®, CPFT™

Hello friends. It is your host, Hallie Balkan, and we are going to do an episode, you've got just me today on really diving into feeding. Feeding the future, the mission behind Feed the Peds. I know I've talked about it here and there a little bit, but I've never really dove too deep. And so I'm not going to. I'm not going to give you a whole big long bio and everything like I do for all my guests. If you guys are here on the podcast, you probably know me. Hallie Balkan, certified pediatric feeding therapist, Certified myofunctional therapist, SLP by trade. I love all things feeding myotots airway. So that's all you need to know for now. As always, I'm very reachable on Instagram at halliebulcken, so you can always reach out and DM me if you have any questions. But I want to talk about this topic today because I realized it doesn't really have the airspace that it deserves. And so we're going to dive into the mission. The mission as to why I've been doing what I've been doing since really middle to end middle of 2019. And before we jump in, I do want to let you know that the doors to Feed the Peds are open. So if you go to feedthepedes.com our 12.5, 12.5 or 40.5 hour course over 1212 weeks is enrolling right now today. Yay. @feedthepedes.com so if you have any questions about that, let me know. But if you're an SLP or OT or slpa, ota, coda, looking to step into the pediatric feeding world and you need to understand more about, you know, some of you can assess and treat independently, some of you can treat after you've been given the assessment and treatment plan. Wherever you are in that realm of professionals I just mentioned, you are welcome to join us inside Feed the Pete. So go to feedthepetes.com and check it out and DM me with any questions. Okay, let's jump into today's episode. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, 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. 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 health care provider. So this is a topic that is super duper near and dear to my heart. And what am I doing today? I'm basically pulling back the curtain on Feed the peds. Why I created it, the mission that fuels it, how it's helping kids off get off waiting lists by basically training. I want to call it like an army of confident, capable, feeding therapists, right? People who really desire more in their skills as clinicians. Some of you are business owners, some of you work in other people's practices or in hospital settings or inpatient outpatient settings. And you've built out programs there. You've quite literally dedicated your life to helping our patients, right? And so I really want to dive into my my heart in a sense and again, where, where this all started. And so let's flashback for a few years to 2019 because you know, I had a lot of experience in private pract. I worked in the school starting out for two years, just working with preschool age kiddos and employed by the county. And then I went to their infant and toddler program for a year. By then I was so jaded and so burnt out that I was like, I'm done. So I quit being an slp. I actually took eight months off of being an slp. I really missed the kids. I came back, I worked for a private practice for a year, almost partnered with them. That didn't work out because I was already planning to go out on my own and it's now been that was June 1, 2014 is when I opened my private practice and the rest is history. It's now April 2025 at of this recording. And so here's the thing. Being a private practice owner, even though I can expand my team, even though I can expand the states in which we treat, I just felt like it wasn't at an exponential enough level for me. And I was like, I can't serve everyone, but I can teach others too. And so because I felt like I was seeing all these endless waiting lists for pediatric feeding cases. And there was this lack of comprehensive training in the pediatric feeding space for pediatric therapists. I was like, something's got to give. Okay. So I had this, like, little spark in me where I was kind of like, I actually thought I was going to launch my mayo course first and then do a feeding course. And one of my dear friends in this online business SLP space was like, hallie, if you don't do it, I'm gonna go tell somebody else to do it. And she was like, we need a feeding course that's really comprehensive. And I was like, no, I know, I know. It's on my to do list. It just feels like a lot right now. And I slept on it and woke up and was like, nope, this is where I got to start. So even though my podcast initially started being targeted towards, you know, airway and myo and tethered oral tissues, I just kind of lumped in pediatric feeding. I was like, it's all related and the rest is history. So that's kind of what sparked my journey. I was just like, there's got to be a better way. So I created the solution. I wish I had. Okay. The same thing happened with the podcast. I went to look for it. It didn't exist. So I created it. It's kind of just like what I do. And the. On the flip side of it, I also just saw a lot of gatekeeping out there, and it hard to find mentors, even that were willing to mentor you if you paid them. And so I wanted to empower and uplift other professionals to step into this desired work, because I just feel like there's a lot of fear around feeding. So many of us are very comfortable working with, you know, pediatric speech sound disorders. And, you know, I'm not downplaying how challenging those cases can be, but it feels a little less medical sometimes. Same thing with, like, language based cases. And so I think a lot of people stay in their comfort zone. And look, some people love that and never want to touch any metal medical SLP type of stuff ever in their life. And that's fine, right? We need all of us. My point is, I knew a lot of SLPs that were kind of working jobs where they were like, well, if I had the right training or I had the right mentor, I had the right access. I'd rather be doing X. Right? Some people want to be in a nicu. Some people just want to work in a private practice and work with, you know, medically challenging cases with kids who are not feeding or who need to Expand what they're eating, or maybe they don't at all. And maybe they're NPO right now. Who knows? Right? So the point was I wanted to uplift and empower others because I really didn't see this going on back in 2019. This was not happening in the online space. And so it was kind of like mission critical here. Like, my mission became to train therapists to confidently. But I knew confidence came through competence. Right? Everyone uses that in their marketing now, so whatever. But basically I wanted to give everybody the confidence to assess and treat pediatric feeding and swallowing cases so that children could get the care they needed faster. Like, get these kids off wait lists. That was my big, big, big mission. Okay. And so my vision then was a world where wait lists are shrinking down to nothing and more children are giving the opportunity to access the services they need and truly thrive. Right? So, you know, I had some core values in this, and those core values really focused on kind of like functional real world learning. Like, what do I mean by that? A lot of us go and sit in courses and we walk away with ideas of what to do with maybe a handful of kids on our caseload. And after we've implemented that, we're like, okay, now what? Now what? Because a lot of us weren't taught to think critically. But we also are not taught in ways that stretch our brain much beyond just ideas that pop into our head as somebody's teaching us. And that's not their fault, and it's not really our fault either. It's just a realization. And I kind of went, huh? Okay. So it's not only that we need to deliver this information and mentor, we also need to create critical thinkers. And so I really wanted this functional real world learning. And it became my mission to figure out how to deliver that in a virtual, like, online space. Okay. And then I wanted to build confidence through mentorship. That's a super core value in everything that we do in my business. And I wanted a con, like a more of a community driven movement of clinician advocates. And so this isn't just about education, Right? It's about access. Every therapist that trains through one of our courses means that there's dozens of children that are going to get the care that they deserve. So I'm like, if I can train thousands of therapists, I can exponentially reach tens of thousands of children. I could never do that inside my practice in a single year. Right? And so it's become really, really exciting because we have had over 2,500 graduates from Feed the PEDs, SLPs, OTs, SL, CODA. I think mostly fully licensed professionals, but we do have some in there who also, who also work with the licensed professionals like codas or slippers to help carry, carry out some therapy that you know, is provided to them in a treatment plan and with some guidance. And so, you know, again, it's just expanding the access through the providers who are licensed to provide the care. Right? That's how we get all these children off waiting lists. And so here's what Feed the Peds offers, right? Because a lot of you are like, okay, great, great, Holly. But like what is this? May, never heard of it or maybe you've heard of it a lot but you don't actually know. I'm just going to give you a very, very, very quick rundown. Okay? So it's a 12 week foundational program. Doors are actually open right now. If you're listening to this, the week of May 5th through 9th, 2025 at feedthepeds.com Assessment to treatment planning and you know, and even parent coaching stuff is in there, right? And we've got topics that we cover like sensory, motor, you know, sensory oral motor, starting solids, tots, picky eating, nicu, nas, other medical complexities. Just so much good stuff. And I personally am the one who teaches the TOTS and MYO modules and how you can adapt this information to like your younger kids, birth to five, which is what the course focuses on. But we also start the course by teaching you what typical development looks like. Because if we don't know what typical development looks like, we don't know what we're deviating from and we also don't know what we're working towards. Right. And so when it comes to the medical side of things, you know, we have to have this idea in mind so we know when ultimately at the end of the day, like what is our end goal here, Right? Yes, we want a lot of parents come to us because they want to expand their kids diet or they want to get their kids eating by mouth. But there's so many nuances and there's so many other things that happens in the pediatric feeding world that's beyond just those two goals that we really need to fully dive into and understand. Right. And so some key things that happen inside the course that I think really helps it stand apart from others is that we have weekly live mentorship. We have a group where you have access to the mentors, where you can ask questions as each module releases. We have dedicated posts where you can post those questions for that module on there. So we have the context of where the question's coming from and we answer those questions throughout the 12 week course. We also have the live, as I mentioned, mentorship, which is in a case study review call and Q and A and interaction type of call that starts following module three. And then we have those real case studies which I think really help drive home the information and help you fully start to extract what you're learning and apply it right to your own patients. So that's, I think that's pretty cool. And then one feature that everybody loves the absolute most is just lifetime access to the course, so you can come back and watch it, listen to it, you know, use it as a resource whenever you want. And I know that's so critical. My ADHD brain was like, if only when I leave courses, I'm like, if only I could go back and hear what she was saying on that slide or this section of the course. I just feel like this would so be so helpful to this patient sitting in front of me. But that doesn't, that doesn't work in most situations. So I wanted to create something where that was possible. So we did. I also want to mention, I've mentioned SLPs, OTS and the like, PTs also who are, you know, trying to get specialized in pediatric feeding. You know, it is technically in your license as well, so you're more than welcome to join us. We do also have new graduates to seasoned pros who join the program. So if you have questions about that, you know, let me know. But here's the thing, right? At the end of the day, it all goes back to this ripple effect that I'm trying to create, trying to get kids off wait lists, right? There's a systemic impact. Like in my private practice, as I mentioned, I could only see so many kids with Feed the peds. I've helped train thousands of therapists, each of whom are serving dozens of kids in their community. So you do the math, right? You do the math. If a therapist starts a clinic right in a care desert, which basically is just a place where one doesn't exist, that does this type of work, which still exists in plenty of places, even just here in the United States, and another person builds a feeding caseload confidently, maybe within a school early intervention setting, and maybe you're able to treat this as well. This is how we shrink wait lists. This is how we change lives. There's a real tangible impact here. And I think that it's critical that we be talking about this because I don't really think people understand that there's still a huge, huge, growing need, huge need for pediatric feeding therapists. I was just recording a podcast episode with a guest today who told me that, you know, there is a clinic where they are, but there's only, I think, a couple therapists. They have like a 6 to 12 month waiting list for feeding and like myofunctional therapy. And that's a long time. Kids with feeding challenges should not have to sit on a wait list. I know that's the reality in some places. But if, again, if we can train more people so we can expand that team within that practice or another practice maybe opens up somewhere close by that does similar work, the kids are just going to benefit. The kids are going to benefit, right? And listen, there's enough to go around. So here's the thing. I started this with this goal in mind and I also was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch this course. But what I ended up launching, I feel like, was a community Feed the Peas was just the beginning of it all. It has evolved into so much more. We have a certification now. I've got a mile course and certification. The mile membership, just like so many things going on, so many great things. Plus, with the certification, we've got like, you know, intermediate to advanced coursework for those who have taken an intro course, like Feed the peds, for example. And honestly, like I said, there's seasoned people coming and taking this course too. And the cool part is we've had some global reach, right? We've had global reach because of people living in all different countries being able to access this online, which is also so very cool, yet it feels like a very personal connection that I get to make with a lot of our students. And that's special. That's really special to me. So here's the thing. We are raising the standard of care together and I want to invite you to join us in that. There are several things you can do. One, you can just share this episode or share this podcast in general, the Untether Podcast. Because this is helping a lot of families, not just professionals, but professionals and families alike learn, find the support they need, understand what to ask for, and advocate for what they and their children need. And it's incredible. It's really incredible. That was not my initial intention when I launched this podcast, but it's been such a heartwarming outcome that makes me really happy. And everyone says, how long are you going to do this podcast for? I don't know, but we're still going and we haven't missed a week since summer of 2019. So here we are. And I will keep showing up every single week and bringing you all more information because that's what is necessary to move the needle forward, especially in the medical world. So I want to invite you to join the mission. You can, if you haven't taken the course yet, enroll in Feed the peds at FeedThePedes.com, explore mentorship and certification. If you've taken the course already or you're just looking for advanced knowledge, we also, as I mentioned, have the advanced courses available now, too, outside of the certification. If that's not something that interests you, you can still access a lot of the courses that we've created. And again, like I said, just share with a colleague or a friend who's ready for this. Who wants to jump into pediatric feeding? If you're passionate about helping kids and you want to feel 100 competent and confident doing feeding therapy, you belong here. You belong here with us. Okay? I built this to serve more kids than I could ever do on my own. And it's working. It's working. It gives me chills. I get chills. And I get a little, a little emotional about it. My eyes are like getting a little watery because it's a really, very cool, very special goal to have set and to see it in motion and to see the kids that are getting the access to care that otherwise would have been on, like I said, really long wait lists or maybe they wouldn't have gotten the proper access to care. Who knows? It's working. It's working. So I want to thank you guys for tuning in. I want to encourage you again to share this episode. Subscribe to the podcast. If you're not subscribed, just get involved in getting out there and at least screening children. Even if you're someone who's not going to be the pediatric feeding therapist, it's still your job as a therapist to screen the kids and refer them onward. And that's it. That's all I've got for you. I have a big surprise coming for you next week as well. It's going to be super fun. So stay tuned for next week's episode. But for now, go join us inside. Feed the peeds@feedthepedes.com I'll see you guys in there. Bye. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer at halliebalken or pop over to @hollybulcan on Instagram to get all the latest updates.