Episode 97: Feed the Peds

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Kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes. Hi and welcome to episode 97 of the Untethered podcast. Ah, 97 episodes. I am so excited. Thank you guys for joining us. Thanks for hanging with us. We're almost at 100. It is the run to 100 over here and I welcome you to hang with us today and learn all about Feed the peds. So let's jump in. I am your host, Holly Vulcan. You know me hopefully by now. If not, go back and listen to some past episodes and get to know me. I am an slp. I am also a certified orofacial Myologist and I specialize in treating pediatric feeding disorders, especially the early years. My love are those infants and toddlers, especially those with tethered tissues and myofunctional concerns we need to address through their pediatric feeding therapy programs. So what are we going to talk about as it relates to Feed the Peds? Well, first of all, I want to just clarify that Feed the Peds is different than the MYO membership because we've had some emails of confusion. The MYO membership is a myo a monthly mayo learning opportunity and networking opportunity and all kinds of other fun stuff goes on. And there you get lots more than that. But that is something that's geared toward SLPs, OTs, RDHs and DDs that want to either learn or expand their MYO skill set. And that's really typically geared towards the four plus crowd as it stands currently in that group. So that's that. That will open up again the end of March, but that's not our focus today. If you're listening to this today on Monday, February 8, 2021, the day that it launches, the cart to Feed the Peds actually opens up today. It opened up at 9am, so. Or opens up at 9am depending on what time you're listening to this. So, and that's eastern time. If you go to feedthepeds.com you can get all the details on the course. We also did a free training last week that you're going to want to go check out in our Facebook group. It's Feed the I want to be a pediatric feeding therapist. That's the Facebook group that will take you there. But you know, go check out feedthepedes.com and feel free to send us an email with any questions to supporteedthepedes.com as well. All right, so now that we've got all the logistical fun stuff out of the way, let's talk about what is Feed the Peds. Feed the Peds is basically a course on the foundations of pediatric feeding and swallowing. Right. It's a comprehensive 12 week course to becoming a pediatric feeding therapist with a focus on early development. We do have a discount, 50% scholarship for students and CF. So again, email supporteedthepedes.com if that is you and you would like that discount to participate. But it's basically that grad school level course that none of us got. Because I think there's maybe three, unless there's a new one. Bruin, there's only three that I have found three universities, grad school programs in the speech, language pathology, grad programs that teach pediatric dysphasia. Most of them teach adults. I was taught in adults. Totally different ballgame, not transferable. Even the anatomy is different when we're talking about an infant and toddler versus an adult. Right. So we really need understand that background. And so why is Feed the Peds different than other things that are out there? Well, for one, Feed the Peds is like I said, a 12 week comprehensive course. It's all online, everything is recorded. The trainings are pre recorded so you can watch them on your own time during the course of the week. And then there's a weekly, starting with week three, we do a weekly case study call and we review the case study that you guys got for the week. And sometimes there's more than one kiddo in a case study. So what's really cool is we get to hop on together onto Zoom and we get to interact and we get to have that networking experience, we get to have that Q and A, we get to get to know each other and also get your questions answered. Now, in addition to that, there's also a Q and A post in the group every week, so you don't have to wait for the zoom. You can ask questions related to that training that week right there on the post. And in fact, we encourage it because we want to have that dialogue going so that we can support you all as you're going through the trainings now. With that said, it is also. It's Also Asha and Iota approved 4.05 Asha or Aota CEUs. And that means it's 40.5 hours. Woo. Holy cow. I know it seems like a lot, but hey, you get to do it all from home. You don't have to travel, so you save time there. And the really great thing is if you dedicate maybe like couple hours a week to the course, you're golden. Okay, so it's maybe, I'd say maybe even, let's say three hours if you plan to get on the calls live as of the third week. If you can dedicate that kind of time, you are good to go. Now, everything is also recorded and you can pace on your own. All right, so we just want to make it clear you can pace with us. You can pace on your own. You get to keep this course for life. We don't take it away from you. We have people who actually took it almost a year ago, like 11 months ago, who are now rewatching it. They are revisiting the course and rewatching modules and going through it. Like, one person told me they were going through the whole thing again, and I was like, that's incredible. You have access. And how cool is that? I mean, that was one of the biggest things that as I really honed my skillset over 10 years of practice and taking all the courses I could get my hands on, that was the one thing I wish was that I wish I could just go sit back during, like that one hour of this course and hear that presenter speak again on X, Y and Z. Because it only applied to these two kiddos like a year ago. But, like, now I've got all these other kiddos on my caseload that I really feel like that information would be super helpful. And my, my PDF handout is just not cutting it right. So that's where, like, you get life access and whoo, it's some good stuff. Our graduates, our alumni really enjoy it. Now you also get. And we'll go into, like, what's covered in a minute, but you also get access to our alumni group when you graduate. The FTP alumn Group which is pretty active. And so you know that those in the alumni group have gone through the course with you and they have you, they have this a similar understanding which helps shape some of the questions or framework for what we're discussing in the alumni group. Also new our alumni now get to add their names to pediatricfeedingtherapist.com, which is a website that I own that we just purchased last year and it's a directory for all of our Feed the Peds grads. So now when I get requests on Instagram or on Facebook or by email or phone for somebody not in my area that we don't have somebody to treat virtually like that doesn't license to do so and or they want in person and they're not local to us, you better believe we're giving out that website left and right. So that is, that is somewhere that you would probably want to have your name if you want to promote your skills as a pediatric feeding therapist. So that's just a nice little bonus that you get and something that I maintain on the back end, but for all of our graduates. So that's fun. All right, so what am I forgetting? I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of different things that I could be sharing with you all. But let's talk about the course itself so you guys can have an understanding about all the meat and potatoes. What's in the course, Right. What are you teaching us, Hallie? Well, number one, it's not just me. I have two fabulous co creators who are teaching the current round with me and that is Ramya Kumar and Caitlin, Caitlin Sprouse. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about them first. So Ramya, like myself, is a speech language pathologist. She specializes in the infant and pediatric feeding population, especially those with medical complexities. She works in a level three NICU and she also works in a pediatrician's office that's local to her in Arizona. She is really passionate about creating long time, long term developmental and mealtime successes for patients and families. And so she is involved in ongoing education. She sits on boards, she presents like she is, you know, very busy with promoting, teaching, supporting all the things. And you can read more about her at FeedThePedes.com, but you should know she is a board certified specialist in swallowing and swallowing disorders. She's a certified neonatal therapist. She is a neonatal developmental care specialist. She's also certified in neonatal touch and massage. And she also just passed her IBCLC Exam. Yay. So she is pretty much a unicorn. Then we have Caitlin, our other unicorn, who is an ot, and Caitlin. One of the things that Caitlin really brings to this course was we wanted to make sure that we weren't just approaching this from one domain. We didn't just want us to be an SLP teaching everybody how to do pediatric feeding, or an OT teaching everybody how to do pedia feeding. We wanted to marry those two professions because we have a lot to offer each other. And so this is a course for SLPs and OTS and our SLP OT students who really want to get into pee feeding. So we need the support from our team that's teaching to teach in a way that it works, one for both professions, but two that we consider various things as we're having this pediatric feeding disorder conversation. And so one of the things that our fabulous OT Caitlin brings to the table is her 10. She has 10 years of experience as a pediatric. Actually, at this point, it's probably like 11 years, and I need to update that, but 11 years of experience as a pediatric occupational therapist, but she's actually been working with children with autism and developmental disabilities for over 17 years. She is. She is the former director of a local outpatient facility in Maryland and in Sparks, Maryland. And she. But she's currently home with her kiddos due to the pandemic. And she also is getting her. I believe it's her clc. I have to check with her, but she's getting lactation credentials because she actually has some future plans in that realm. So again, you've really got. And then there's me, Hallie, who. Well, let me go back to Caitlin for a second. The other thing I want to add is when it comes to sensory, we all know we can't separate sensory out from motor, right? So Caitlin really brings that and drives that home with what she does. She's able to talk to, you know, sensory concerns, sensory processing. She's able to talk about our kiddos on the spectrum. In fact, that's. That's one of her. That's her module. She really is diving deep with that. So we really value her because we can't teach pediatric feeding and leave these things out. Right. Unfortunately, that happens often, but that's not something we were willing to give up in creating our course. We wanted the whole. The whole kit and caboodle for you guys. No leaf unturned. So. Yes. So that is Caitlin, who we are so grateful for. Then there's me, Hallie Balkan. I am a speech pathologist as you guys probably know, since you're on my podcast, hopefully this is not the first episode you've ever heard from me. But if it is, go back and listen to others. You'll have fun with us. I am a pediatric feeding specialist myself. I really prefer the infant and toddler realm as well. I also do special. I am a certified orofacial myologist and I do specialize in treating Mayo in the four plus crowd. But what I did and what that allowed me to do was really hone in those skills and figure out how the heck to apply what traditional MYO programs teach to our birth through for crowd, our kids who are not ready for a traditional MYO program that requires the cognitive level of a four year old. And so that's also where I said I can't teach this course without infusing how tethered oral tissues and how orofacial myofunction disorders come into play in a pediatric feeding sense. Right. If that. If that makes sense. Right. So what we call it, because we all know this, if you're dealing with a kiddo in therapy, you got a kiddo on your caseload who is under the age of four, it's not myo. And if someone's telling you it's myo, they're wrong and they're missing the boat in a lot of ways. So if they're taking your money and they're telling you that, I'm sorry, but you need to double check their credentials. You need a pediatric feeding therapist, arguably someone who's had training in myo. If you have concerns, myofunctional concerns about your child would be ideal so that they can treat the pediatric feeding disorder but also work from. I say it's pediatric feeding therapy with a twist of myo. Right. They work on the feeding skills, they create a treatment plan that has the myofunctional therapy goals as well as a overarching skill that we're also working to develop. Right. So we're not doing traditional Mayo, but we're taking what we know about my. We're taking the overall goals and every all of our knowledge, and we are applying it as appropriate and in ways that works for a child who requires pediatric feeding therapy. Okay. So for all intents and purposes, SLPs MYO is included in our skill set. This is something that every single pediatric feeding therapist should be trained in, and it is something that we should be able to modify and apply to our pediatric feeding patients. Because I don't see a lot of kids with feeding disorders that don't also have myofunctional disorders. All right, so we're just gonna leave that one out there right now. I know, I just blew some. There's some mind blown emojis going off in people's heads at the moment. Anyways, now that I just dropped that on you guys, let's talk. Let's have a sneak peek of what we're gonna be covering in the 12 weeks. So the first module is normal prenatal development, birth to six months. And so we take a look at what happens in the womb during the earliest developmental stage, how gross motor, fine motor, oral skills continue to develop in the newborn stage. And then there is really a good emphasis in this module on how to approach both breast and breast versus bottle feeding. Okay. Keeping in mind we have people with lactation credentials in here, so they can talk about that and teach about that, but they can also. We also are qualified to talk about bottle feeding. In module two, we go into normal development for this for six months to one year. And module three is also normal development, but one year to two years and beyond. Now, the reason why we spend so much time on normal development, you cannot know or treat dysfunction if you don't know what normal is. How do you know they're deviating from the norm if you don't know what normal is? This is actually like a big mind blowing moment for some people who are in our free training last week where we discussed needing to know normal and looking at the milestone chart it gave them because some of the therapists were like, whoa, yeah, I really need to learn what normal is. Because now this is like, I'm just over here, like in awe. Yeah, a lot of programs don't teach that. Probably because it takes time. I understand, but at the same time, I don't understand because we cannot skip it. So any program that you're trying to get into, if you're new to the feed feeding, the feed feeding listening, the feed feeding world, if you're new, you need a course that talks about normal development. So that's why we do normal prenatal and birth to six. In the first module, we do normal development six months to a year. In the second module, and in that one we talk about normal, gross, fine and oral development again of infants with a special attention to postural prerequisite requisites, the introduction of solids and baby led weaning. Then in module three, with normal development one year to two years and beyond, we go on to talk about normal gross fine motor, oral motor development as well. But now in the toddler ages with a focus on feeding skills. Feeding skill developments like utensil usage, adult like rotary chew versus diagonal chew. Right. So we're going to go into the some good stuff now. I'm really simplifying it and giving you an overview. If you go to FeedThePedes.com today, you will see that there is. This is all laid out for you, but about halfway down the page where we have our Asha CEUS listed, you can also download. There's a button to download a PDF that gives you. It's not even everything, but it at least gives you some more bullet points on what we're talking about in each module if you're interested. It's the objectives, right, that we submitted to ASHA and aota. But just know that those are just the objectives and it was already super long. We go through more than what's even listed there because like I said, this is comprehensive. Module four is assessment. So in module four we learn how to assess our patients with pediatric feeding disorders using the assessment forms we have created for you that you get to download and use over and over again. That's been created by our team of pediatric feeding experts. Module five and six are both treatment. Yes, treatment is involved and we needed two modules for it. So in module one we. Or module five, sorry, part one of treatment, we discover where to start during your session with exercises, compensations, modifications like thickening, considerations, way to prevent aversions. All these things that so many of us fear, like, you know, creating an aversion. And then module six, treatment, part two, we talk about, you know, treatment with a special focus on sensory processing and autism spectrum spec. Autism spectrum spectrum disorders wide. Why is that a mouthful for me today? Anyway, so. And that's where I mentioned, you know, Caitlin comes in wherever you hear positioning, you hear sensory autism. You know, we're definitely pulling in OT expertise as it's very important to do so on these topics. Module 7 is one of my favorites because I teach it and that's tethered oral tissues, tots, tuts, tauts. And so this is where you're going to learn how to assess the and treat tots in this module for these kiddos. Birth to four with a comprehensive plan to address that full body impact. You're going to learn when to refer for a frenectomy. You're going to learn protocols for pre and post op patients. This is a huge module and it's the one that everybody tells me they want. But no, we are not separating it out. So don't email Me and ask. Sorry. I do have a really great colleague who's been on the podcast who teaches just a tethered oral tissue course. So if you're interested in that, check out Autumn Reed Henning's course. Her tots course was the original. Like the OG everybody else that was after her, she was the OG and her course is the best. So definitely reach out to her or me and I can always give you the link to her stuff. Module eight, treating myofunctional disorders. Also me. Yay. Love Mayo. This is where we want to recognize abnormalities of the lips. The lips, the tongue, the jaw, along with oral habits and how that can lead to or suggest, you know, abnormalities. What are we looking at? Why are these things off? You know, we're going to kind of take a good deep dive into understanding orofacial myofunctional disorders as it relates to these kiddos, these young kiddos, and create responsive treatment plans, which is so key because it's not MYO for these kiddos. It's pediatric feeding therapy with a MYO twist, right? With MYO in mind and MYO focused, maybe objectives or some goals that we're working on. But it's treated very differently in the under four crowd. And so you can't just take what you learn in a mild course and apply that to a kid under the age of four. You have to know how to do that. And that's what I'm going to teach you in module 8. Module 9, 10, 11 and 12 are all of our medical complexity modules. And yes, there are four modules for that because there are a lot of medical complexities. In Module 9, you identify and address pediatric feeding needs with advanced issues, such as prematurity, life in the NICU, neonatal abstinence syndrome. Module 10, we recognize, we look at recognizing and treating feeding complications with craniofacial disorders and various other syndromes. Module 11, we learn about neurological, cardiac and gastrointestinal. Gastrointestinal. Can't talk today, you guys. Issues that we need to be aware of when assessing and treating pediatric feeding patients. And then MOD12, we're looking at airway considerations, so we have a better understanding of them in our peeved feeding cases. And we're looking at instrumental assessments and the IDDSI framework. So there's a lot of goodness covered in this course. And again, this is just the overview, but it's everything you need to gain the mindset, the confidence, the skillset to be able to take on pediatric feeding and swallowing patients. So at this point, really, the Decision is yours. If you want more info, just go to feedthepedes.com we would love to have you. We have had over. Goodness, how many did I count? I'm like losing maybe 580, I think therapists. Over 580 therapists went through our first three courses in 2020. This is the first time we're offering it in 2021 and we only offer it three times a year. So again, this is a 12 week course designed for any SLP or OT interested in working with pediatric feeding and swallowing patients with a focus on the foundations of early development. If that's not you, it's not for you. Okay, so that is pretty much it. What I'll say about Feed the Peas is that, you know, how's it different from other trainings or courses? Unlike most trainings that cover just one specific topic and take anywhere from an hour to a weekend to complete, this is a 12 week course taught by multiple specialists in many focus areas. And there's just no other online course out there that provides the in depth coverage or hands on approach that we've developed in an online setting. Basically it's first of a kind learning experience. Like this is also I talked about Autumn's course being the OG in the tots world. This is the OG in the comprehensive pee feeding world. We have quite literally created that grad school course you did not get. Nothing else out there exists like this. So if you have questions, email supporteedthepedes.com or go to feedthepedes.com right now because the cart is open so you can get tons of questions answered there. Again, it is ASHA and AOTA approved and submitted for CEUs at the end. We do have 4.05 Asha CEUs and 4.05 AOTA CEUs. So yeah, if you guys have questions, let me know. You again can email supporteedthepeds.com or if you get this in your email, just hit reply and we'd be happy to respond. We'd love to have you join us if your goal is to get into working with pediatric feeding disorders. And we hope that this is helpful because we've had so many questions about what is this? What is this? What is this? By the way, if you're listening live, I'm also going to do a Q and A on the Facebook page on Thursday night. Maybe we'll also do it on. We could do it on Instagram but you guys won't. Well, I guess you could see. Anyways what we're gonna do is a little mini tethered oral tissue talk. And we're gonna talk about some of the myths, like are posterior tongue ties real? And, you know, our tots a fad. Okay, so we're gonna do this little chat and then we are. I'm gonna do a little, like, webinary thing, if you will. And then we're gonna do a Q and A for the remainder of the time to answer any of your questions. So that's going to be Thursday night. I have to check the time. I want to say it's 8pm Eastern time, but I could be wrong. Get on our email list and let us know if you have questions. You can do that by going to FeedThePedes.com well, just go to FeedThePedes.com you'll get on our email list that way. Or email jessupportthepedes.com I know I've said it like 50 times, but hopefully you were able to write that down in your brain. Especially if you're driving. Don't drive off the road. All right, guys, we hope that everyone's having a wonderful, wonderful day and we look forward to seeing you inside. Feed the peas if you are that SLP or OT in need of this. Otherwise, we will be back with some of our other fun topics on the podcast next Monday. Until then, this is Hallie signing off. Thanks for listening to this podcast.

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