Treatment of Food Selectivity in a Child with Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder Through Parent Teleconsultation

Bloomfield et al. (2019) coached a mom through Zoom to help her young learners with ARFID eat new foods. They used a changing-criterion design: each week the child had to take one more bite of a non-preferred food to earn a toy. The BCBA never entered the home; all teaching happened on video calls. Sessions lasted 10–15 minutes and took place at the family’s dinner table.

Bites of target foods rose from zero to 12 per session as the criterion grew. The mom followed every step correctly on 97 % of checks. At the end, the child accepted four new foods and the mom rated the program 6 out of 7 for usefulness. Gains held one month later.

Silbaugh et al. (2018) also worked at home, but their team added gentle physical guidance when praise alone failed. Bloomfield shows you can get similar gains without touching the child—parent coaching on screen is enough. Russo et al. (2019) used the same changing-criterion method with teens in person; Bloomfield proves the sequence works through a webcam for a younger child. Pubylski-Yanofchick et al. (2022) later moved the same behavioral tactics to an adult with ASD, showing the lifespan reach of reinforcement-based feeding work.

You can run an effective feeding program without driving to the home. Train the parent on Zoom, send a toy menu, and raise the bite goal each week. Start with one bite of a hated veggie and add one more every session. The parent delivers the reinforcer, you track data live, and the child eats a bigger variety within a month.