ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on clinical experience of interventions following tube feeding for children and the treatment. Tube feeding is the delivery of a liquid nutritional formula to the infant or child by a tube. Tube feeding can be prescribed in conjunction with a wide range of paediatric organic conditions, and many chronic diseases invariably require some form of tube feeding. Clinical experience suggests that parents frequently make the observation that their tube-fed infants never cry for food. All tube-fed children will have some physical disturbance of their normal alimentary processes. Tube feeding as an infant's main source of nutrition renders the baby passive in all aspects of the experience of feeding. A typical behavioural intervention for food refusal following tube feeding was described which, in summary, incorporates three basic levels. These are changes to the mealtime structure; desensitisation of the child to the anxiety-provoking food; and reduction of tube feeding.
