The SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) Approach to Feeding is a research-based, family-centered feeding therapy designed to support children who struggle with eating. Whether your child is a picky eater, has feeding aversions, or faces developmental challenges related to food, the SOS Approach offers a gentle, structured pathway to success.
Developed by Dr. Kay Toomey, the SOS Approach focuses on the whole child by integrating sensory, motor, oral, behavioral, medical, and nutritional factors. It moves beyond just “getting kids to eat” and instead emphasizes building comfort and skills around food in a step-by-step, pressure-free way.
What Makes the SOS Approach Unique?
- Uses a systematic, play-based method to increase a child’s comfort with various foods.
- Respects the child’s individual pace—never forcing or pressuring eating.
- Encourages progress through 32 steps of eating—from tolerating food near them, all the way to chewing and swallowing.
- Integrates a multidisciplinary perspective, supporting collaboration between OTs, SLPs, dietitians, and physicians.
- Proven effective for children with sensory processing difficulties, autism, oral-motor delays, ARFID, and other feeding disorders.
Who Can Benefit?
- Have a history of medical issues affecting feeding (e.g. reflux, prematurity, tube feeding)
- Eating a limited variety of food (less than 20)
- Refuse entire food groups or textures
- Experience anxiety or distress around mealtime
- Have difficulty gaining weight or meeting nutritional needs