Food Is Fun is a treatment program for children who refuse to eat or only eat a limited range of foods. The group uses a highly structured, positive modeling, and positive feedback approach to eating. The purpose of this group is to allow the children to experience successful eating and steps to eating in a controlled non-threatening environment and to provide the parents with support and important strategies, skills and techniques to use at home. The parents’ group offers a supportive environment for learning. These are important differences between this feeding group and other feeding programs.

Children develop feeding problems for a variety of reasons. Some children’s sensory systems overreact to food. Some children have difficulty transitioning from tube feeding to oral feeding because of fear and the sensation of eating. Others may have a history of reflux, or gastro-intestinal problems. Each child is an individual and has individual needs.

The inter-disciplinary team includes:

• Occupational therapist
• Speech Pathologist
• Marriage, Family and Child Counselor
• Physician as part of the screening team

• children who are transitioning from tube to oral feeding
• children who have a low volume oral intake
• children who have poor weight gain
• children who accept only a limited variety of tastes and textures in the diet
• children who have difficulty transitioning to advanced textures
• children who demonstrate food refusal
• families who experience excessive power struggles with food and food related issues due to some of the above issues