Weaning children from prolonged enteral nutrition: A position paper.

Enteral nutrition (EN) allows adequate nutritional intake in children for whom oral intake is impossible, insufficient or unsafe. With maturation and health improvements, most children ameliorate oral skills and become able to eat orally, therefore weaning from EN becomes a therapeutic goal. No recommendations currently exist on tube weaning, and practices vary widely between centres.

[Creation of a tool to help assess eating disorders in young children].

In order to optimize the care of young hospitalized children with eating disorders, the Orality group at the Necker-Enfants malades University Hospital in Paris has created a therapeutic education tool: the Fleur des sens. This flower which is to be colored at the end of the meal with the child has nine petals representing nine foods that make up the meal, which were initially difficult or even impossible for the young patient to eat. This tool participates in the educational diagnosis and then in the formative evaluation of the child.

[Psychomotor education and speech therapy when weaning a child off artificial feeding].

To support children and their families with weaning off artificial nutrition, a psychomotor therapist and speech therapist from the 'Pierre Robin syndrome and congenital sucking-swallowing disorders' specialist rare disease centre at Necker-Enfant Malades hospital in Paris, have set up a joint consultation, as a complement to medical consultations. This programme shows how speech therapy and psychomotor education can complement each other in order to help children and their parents during this difficult period.