If your child struggles with feeding it can be a major stress to almost every area of your life. It’s scary to think that your baby isn’t thriving or that your preschooler’s nutrition might be suffering because of her picky eating. Maybe you’ve given up on meals out with friends because you know your highly selective 10 year old won’t eat anything on the menu. You’ve gotten lots of well-meaning advice, but what you really need is an expert to come alongside you and help change things for the better. That’s where I come in!

Hi, I’m Tanya, and pediatric feeding and swallowing is my passion! I love partnering with parents to get to the root of their kids’ feeding challenges and on the road to great eating. YOU are the expert in your baby or child and I’m quite frankly a bit of a geek when it comes to research, so we’ll make a great team as I use evidenced based strategies and a great big dose of compassion to help your family make changes that last, not just during a therapy session, but at every feeding or meal.

How did I get here? I knew from high school (and perhaps earlier) that I wanted to work with kids, but I wasn’t sure how. I also loved science, so after graduation I packed up and headed from central Florida to the promised land of upstate South Carolina where I earned a degree in Biological Science from Clemson University. Then the Lowcountry stole my heart for a few years while I pursued my Masters in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the Medical University of South Carolina, where I graduated in 2005. It was my clinical experiences at MUSC and Duke Children’s Hospitals that cemented my love for working with babies and kids on their feeding. And of course the upstate wooed me home.

Over my years as a speech-language pathologist I’ve worked with hundreds of kids from birth through school age with feeding and swallowing problems arising from a wide variety of mild to severe medical conditions. Every tiny person has challenged me and made me better equipped to help the next family I encounter. I love learning and each year I attend multiple courses to advance my skills in addition to regularly geeking out over scholarly journal articles. In 2017 I became a certified lactation counselor so I could better help my breastfeeding babies and mamas and the counseling skills I gained have actually helped me do a better job with all my clients.