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Home » Consumer Information » Children with Disabilities

Feeding Children with Disabilities

Getting a disable child to eat can be a painstaking task. As a result, many of them are malnourished. The amount of food they consume may be restricted due to anorexia, chewing and swallowing troubles, or nausea. Feeding time can feel like an eternity and be very unappealing for both parties involved.

Sometimes after ingestion, the child may aspirate, or vomit and inhale it into their bronchial tube. This can prove to be deadly if the airway is not cleared of the food rapidly enough.

Malnutrition can cause stunted growth as well as impairment of the nervous, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and immune systems. In order to determine whether a disabled child's caloric intake is adequate, a multifaceted assessment should be performed that includes a history of feeding, oral-motor function test, and nutritional evaluation. Disabled children do not require nearly as much energy as a typical child their age because they are generally inactive in comparison. Therefore, their daily food consumption quota does not need to be set as high. However, spasticity, athetosis, seizures, and repeated infections can increase these energy requirements. Nutrient deficits cannot be ruled out even if the child is eating all of the food fed to them; any of the previously mentioned behaviors could cause an imbalance if the energy supplied by the food is less than the energy burned through activity.

Feeding by mouth can be improved via:

  • Change in posture.
  • Custom seating.
  • Feeding equipment (e.g., feeding tube).
  • Oral desensitization.
  • Mashing or running lumpy food through the blender.
  • Thickening fluids.
  • Using calorie supplements.
  • Treatment of acid reflux or esophagitis.

When oral feeding is deemed unsafe, unpleasant, insufficient, or a waste of time, non-oral feeding is an alternative. Long-term non-oral feeding requires a gastrostomy, which is less conspicuous than a nasogastric tube. It is also not as prone to displacement, less traumatic, and can drastically improve one's quality of life. On the other hand, it can increase the odds of disease and infection. If the child still faces bouts of reflux, the only remedy may be a fundoplication, or a surgical procedure in which the fundus of the stomach is wrapped around the esophagus to prevent further reflux. If your child's only hope is a fundoplication procedure, contact a Florida social security disability attorney to find out whether this operation is funded by an outside source.