Feeding Therapy is Fun!

I've heard the expression many times before "everything happens for a reason." Here's a sequence of events that led me to meet Adam Kolesar, my son Ari's food therapist.

I met a woman named Emily. Emily told me about this great art studio called Barking Cat that had children's art classes. I signed Ari up for classes there, and he loved it! I met a woman at there, also named Sarah, whose daughter went to classes at Barking Cat. We got to talking, and I was complaining about the fact that Ari was a notoriously picky eater. Sarah commiserated with me.

"My daughter was the same. She's two now, and she just started eating. She was refusing food for the longest time. But you know what finally worked?"

"What?" I asked her.

"Feeding Therapy."

Sarah went on to tell me about Adam Kolesar, a food therapist. Adam runs Brooklyn Feeding Academy, a private practice where he helps problem eaters get back on track. The more I talked to Sarah, the more I realized that Ari was not just a picky eater; he was considered what is called a "problem eater." That is to say he eats ten foods or less and engages in problematic behavior at meal times, i.e. spitting food out, refusing to eat, refusing to sit at the table and texture refusal, just to name a few.

I decided to call this Adam dude and see what was up. The minute I got him on the phone, I got a good vibe. Adam is a speech language pathologist and has worked in the field for many years with a variety of populations. He told me the process involved in feeding therapy. There is a 32- step process to eating.

Adam came to our house and observed Ari being fed a meal first, by me, and then by Wil. After he made those observations, he developed a plan, and we started food therapy. Here is our first session. Adam started Ari with an orange progression. Take a look at how Adam makes food fun in order to get Ari to interact with it.

What do you think? Would you try feeding therapy with your child?