30/11/2025
Final TMC CDP-Feeding Clinic Conference for 2025!
A big thank you to Dr. Georgina Sakyi of The Cleveland Clinic for guiding us through the psychologist’s role in pediatric feeding care and to The Feeding Clinic Community for taking the time to join us today! :)
✨ Session Pearls and Takeaways
• Always return to function. Understanding why a behavior occurs is essential for meaningful feeding intervention.
• Use Bronfenbrenner’s lens. Feeding is influenced not only by the child but by family systems, school environments, community resources, and broader societal conditions.
• View feeding through the child–parent dyad. Mealtime is a relational process shaped by co-regulation, stress, expectations, and emotional climates.
• Prioritize developmental and temperamental fit. Feeding plans must match the child’s readiness, sensory needs, pacing, and regulatory capacity.
• Practice cultural humility. Families’ beliefs, identities, histories, and lived realities must shape how we assess, support, and collaborate.
• Engage social workers for macrosystem needs. Poverty, food insecurity, transportation, and limited access strongly affect feeding success—and require systems-level support.
• Honor the depth of becoming a feeding psychologist. This work blends neurodevelopment, behavior, emotion, systems-thinking, cultural competence, and family-centered care.
• Transdisciplinary teamwork is essential. Real progress happens when pediatricians, psychologists, therapists, nutritionists, social workers, and families work beyond silos with shared goals.
Working together—across disciplines and systems—makes mealtime success truly possible. 🍽️💙
