More Than Picky: Food Chaining with Cheri Fraker, CCC/SLP

This episode teaches you how to do PreChaining therapy like an expert and fulfill your role well on a multidisciplinary feeding team. This is about the knowledge you gain only on the job, and only with experience. How do you do multidisciplinary PreChaining therapy and play Hot Potato well? How skilled are you? Do you understand the work the rest of the team is doing? Check and see! Let’s look at...

This episode explains how to do a safe, informative feeding and swallowing evaluation and what to do when things do go “off the rails.” Product flow rate issues? Positioning issues? Pacing needed? Or is something much more significant going on? What is the root of many types of feeding aversion and how does it show itself in infancy? Aspiration fears? How do you comfort and educate the parents? Wh...

Sometimes a mistake can be your best learning opportunity. Cheri shares all she has learned from making mistakes and how having mentors around her helped her grow through those challenging times.

Fear, dread, avoidance, nausea, pain, always choosing hunger over eating. Is your child caught in that trap? How do you get out? We have to take all thoughts into captivity and analyze them. We have to check our thinking. Are the fears realistic? I talk about treatment plans for extreme selectivity and ARFID. These are the kids that don’t eat. Yet.

This episode focuses on the child who won’t eat. How do you shape less than desirable behaviors into more positive behaviors? Is the child picky or truly selective? Is it even fair to call someone “picky?” What about negative, aggressive or dangerous behavior? Tantrums? Meltdowns? When do you need help? Ongoing refusal of food? It is more than picky. This episode is packed with suggestions to turn...

Some children can’t eat, some won’t eat and some just don’t eat. Today, we talk about the children who can’t, cannot physically eat, we discuss the anatomical reasons why they struggle, and how to develop team treatment plans to intervene. You must treat the child and support the family. It is possible to overcome these issues and get the child eating again.

Help! The Holidays are here! This episode is full of tips to help you and your child have a great Thanksgiving. Travel tips, lodging suggestions, mealtime modifications, sensory breaks, calming breaks and other tips to help the day be as pleasant as possible.

Did you realize that you actually treat the Suck/Swallow/Breathe sequence long term? With infants, kids, teens and adults? How do you develop POWER musculature for safe eating and drinking? How can you improve swallowing beyond just using thickening? What activities help build a respiratory system that supports oral feeding? This episode answers those questions and covers the first three months of...

This episode is about treating the child with special needs. Where do you start your treatment program for a child with special needs and the challenges of extreme selective eating? How do you make progress? Read cues? Tune in, and find out. Case histories are discussed in detail.  

It is estimated that 590 million people suffer from dysphagia. Dysphagia impacts infants, children, teens and adults. Acquired dysphagia will impact way too many people over the age of 60. Our Dysphagia Food Chaining therapy program is explained in detail. Multiple, specific food chaining ideas are shared, giving the listener foods to consider from all food groups. The complexity of advanced food...

This episode provides examples of clustered, brand specific food items to create initial food chains. In no way are these the only foods to accept. The American diet is addressed today. Specific, simple, easy to eat food chaining examples are provided because brand is very important to patients struggling to eat new foods. The goal is new without no, and new without fear. I also provide examples o...

Cheri explains how to develop a Chaining program that is customized to each individual child, how to get started in treatment and how to have great, fun and effective Food Chaining therapy sessions.

This one is about working on the pediatric feeding team and your role as the SLP from your initial evaluation to the development of a very detailed treatment program. This is PreChaining 101 from birth to age one year. I also discuss how to see the big scary red flags and the all important signs of big anatomical TROUBLE. So jump in, let’s learn about these extremely complex issues that lead to se...

This first therapy short podcast brings YOU in the therapy room with our team. You will hear what we do step by step in treatment. This podcast is set up to describe the session like you were observing treatment. All about the baby with dysphagia.

This episode addresses PreChaining therapy in the beginning phase and how to “script” children through those first bites of food. Treatment builds to help the child develop the complex oral sensory motor gymnastics of eating a wide variety of foods and drinking liquids. PreChaining is “Lather rinse repeat.” Patterned neuronal activity. Understanding how to eat based on the type of food presented....

This episode comes from the CDC website and covers information about cronobacter and risks for food poisoning. Detailed information is provided about how to safely express and store breast milk, how to mix and store infant formula, how to use, make and store baby food, how to safely clean baby feeding products and more tips for food safety for older children. This is part 1 with more on food borne...

Do you have the level of respect you need for the complexity of eating food? Do you understand why it is so hard and what to DO to help that baby struggling with bottle and gagging on a spoon? What is the child’s feeding age? Is aversion rising? What should your first sessions look like. Help the baby see, smell, hear, feel and start to know how to eat. Safely and well. Respect this stage. Don’t m...

This episode reviews the PreChaining comprehensive infant feeding evaluation, discuses the volume of infant feedings, 0-6 month feeding skill development, suggests specific feeding products and talks about problems with gagging. Why does the baby have such difficulty transitioning to spoon feeding? There is a therapist’s quiz at the end! Pop quiz! Oh happy day!

This episode discusses the beginning of aversive feeding patterns, starting in today’s episode, with medically fragile infants. The feeding evaluation and instrumental swallowing assessment can be challenging. PreChaining therapy programs are also described. More on this topic later this week….