Feeding difficulties and extreme picky eating can cause significant stress for the whole family, but occupational therapy offers effective, evidence-based support. At WonderKids in Malta, our occupational therapists help children overcome food aversions, expand their diet, and develop a healthier relationship with mealtimes through gentle, sensory-based approaches.
What Are Feeding Difficulties?
While most children go through phases of picky eating, some children have more significant feeding challenges that go beyond typical fussiness. These children may eat only a very limited number of foods (often fewer than 20), gag or vomit in response to certain textures, refuse entire food groups, show extreme distress when new foods are presented, or take excessively long to eat.
Feeding difficulties can be driven by sensory sensitivities, oral motor challenges, anxiety, or past negative experiences with food. They can affect nutrition, growth, social participation, and family well-being.
How Do Feeding Difficulties Affect Families?
Mealtimes can become a source of daily stress and conflict. Parents may worry about nutrition, feel pressure from family members, struggle with eating out or attending social events, and spend excessive time preparing special meals. Children may feel anxious about mealtimes and avoid social situations that involve food, such as birthday parties and school lunches.
Understanding that feeding difficulties are not about disobedience or bad parenting is important. These are genuine sensory and motor challenges that require specialist support.
How We Help at WonderKids
Our approach is systematic, gentle, and pressure-free. We never force children to eat or use rewards or punishments around food. Instead, we address the underlying sensory and motor factors that make eating difficult.
Our feeding therapy programme includes:
- Comprehensive assessment: Evaluating sensory processing, oral motor skills, seating and posture, and the mealtime environment
- Sensory desensitisation: Gradually increasing tolerance to new foods through a hierarchy of steps, from looking at food, to touching, smelling, and eventually tasting
- Oral motor development: Strengthening the muscles needed for safe, efficient chewing and swallowing
- Food exploration activities: Fun, play-based activities that help children interact with food in a non-threatening way
- Mealtime environment modification: Recommending changes to seating, utensils, plates, and the overall mealtime routine to reduce stress
- Parent coaching: Teaching families strategies for introducing new foods, managing mealtimes, and reducing pressure
What to Expect from Therapy
We begin with a detailed assessment at our Mosta clinic, gathering information about your child’s eating history, current diet, sensory profile, and mealtime behaviours. We may observe a mealtime or ask you to bring food samples.
Therapy sessions include both direct work with your child and parent coaching. Progress with feeding can be gradual, so we celebrate every small step, from tolerating a new food on the plate to touching, tasting, and eventually eating it. We provide clear guidance for mealtimes at home and work with schools and nurseries as needed.
How Can Parents Help?
Eat together as a family, offer new foods alongside accepted ones without pressure, avoid making separate meals, keep mealtimes calm and time-limited, and avoid using food as reward or punishment. Our therapists provide detailed, individualised guidance.
References
- American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). (2017). Occupational therapy’s role in feeding, eating, and swallowing.
- Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT). (2021). Occupational therapy for children with feeding difficulties.
Contact WonderKids on +356 77048650 or email [email protected] to book a feeding assessment.