Feeding & Swallowing Newsletter

We first and foremost wanted to wish you a Happy New Year! We look forward to continuing to offer our services to you and our continued collaboration. To kick off this first newsletter of 2023, we wanted to focus on feeding and swallowing disorders. It often surprises people unfamiliar with the field of speech-language pathology, that SLPs are trained to work with feeding and swallowing disorders.  Our job title can sometimes be misleading … we are not only working with speech and/or language issues!

The act of eating is an incredibly complex process that most of us take for granted.  The entire process of moving food from the mouth to the stomach requires using 26 muscles and 6 cranial nerves.  That’s a lot to coordinate!  According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), 25-45% of typically developing children and up to 80% of children with special needs and/or chronic health issues are affected by feeding disorders.  Pediatric feeding disorders affect more than 1 in 37 children under the age of 5 in the United States each year (as per FeedingMatters.org).

So, what exactly is a feeding disorder?  And how does it differ from dysphagia?  Charts always make things a little easier to understand, right!?  Please note, the following summarized information was obtained from ASHA.