Apart from working in individual settings, Ohana Therapy also runs group feeding therapy sessions for children. Children will be grouped based on their ages and/or ability levels to ensure conducive, comfortable, and productive sessions. Parents are also highly encouraged to sit in to ensure carryover of feeding skills to home settings.

There will be two feeding therapists to a group of maximum 5 parent-child dyads. Therapists will incorporate sensory and oral motor support strategies as necessary to support each individual. The group setting provides the added benefit of learning through peer interaction and modelling.

As documented in Albert Bandura’s seminal work in Social Psychology, children demonstrate much more gains learning from peers like themselves, as opposed to role models who are too far advanced in their skills, such as peers in school, therapists, or parents. At Ohana Therapy, we acknowledge that each child has a different strength and area of need within feeding. Our feeding group allows children with feeding problems to act as a role model themselves with some foods (also allowing for  positive reinforcement and increased self esteem during eating), as well as to watch and learn from the other children who may be demonstrating a skill that they have yet to acquire, e.g. a new food that they are not yet willing to try.

Eating is a highly social activity. By creating a fun and relaxed atmosphere in the sessions, we hope to reduce anxieties children may have with trying new or undesired foods thus increasing opportunities for food exploration and working toward expanding their diet!

Your participation in the feeding groups is also very important in your child’s progress. The feeding group will be a safe space for parents to share stories about the difficult emotions that come with children’s mealtime struggles. There will also be mutual learning through the observations of other parent-child dyads during mealtimes.