two toddlers sitting on sofa while using tablet computer

About Us!

Supporting your child's speech and feeding journey with personalized care and family involvement.

Meet Our Therapists

Get to know the faces behind the care, their experience, and what makes them passionate about helping you.

150+

15

Trusted Experts

Since 2010

Tanya Barber, M.S., CCC-SLP, CLC

Tanya, co-owner of East Nashville Speech and Feeding Therapy, has 20 years of experience working with babies and kids with a range of communication and feeding/swallowing challenges. She had a strong interest in feeding and swallowing while she was still in her graduate education. Tanya was fortunate to be able to train at two different children’s hospitals, including in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. For most of her career she worked for a hospital system. She provided care in the outpatient, inpatient and home care settings. This care included completing instrumental swallow studies. Tanya has supported premature babies in the special care nursery. Additionally, she helped NICU graduates and other medically complex children thrive after leaving the hospital with home health services. She has experience working with babies and kids with a variety of medical diagnoses, including addressing communication and swallowing with individuals with tracheostomies, ventilators and feeding tubes.

After many years of working with babies on their feeding, Tanya decided to pursue a lactation credential so she could better support breastfeeding dyads under her care. Becoming a certified lactation counselor has advanced her skills with breastfeeding dyads. Additionally, the counseling aspects of the training improved her ability to care for all of her clients.

Tanya's clinical practice has shown, again and again, that feeding and communication are whole-body and whole-person activities. We don’t use just the mouth to swallow and talk. We don’t eat or communicate in a vacuum.This knowledge leads her to take a holistic, family-centered and trauma-informed approach. It’s also what has given her a passion for providing education and training to parents as they support their kids through feeding and communication milestones such as milk feeding, introduction of solid foods, babbling, and emergence of first words.