Child Oral and Motor Proficiency Scale (ChOMPS)

The Child Oral and Motor Proficiency Scale (ChOMPS) asks a caregiver what a child can physically do when eating and drinking, from six months through age seven. Each item starts with "My child can" and is answered yes, sometimes, or not yet — so it captures ability rather than willingness, which matters when a child both can't and won't.

Sixty-three items sort into four areas. Fundamental oral-motor skills covers basic mouth movements like closing the lips and moving the tongue. Oral-motor coordination covers managing textures without gagging, coughing, or choking. Basic movement patterns covers the postural and hand skills that make eating possible, like sitting upright and bringing hands to the mouth. Complex movement patterns covers later skills such as cup drinking, utensil use, and chewing.

• Factor Structure and Psychometrics: Park et al. (2019)

Licensing Notes: The ChOMPS is made available for non-commercial use in clinical practice, education, and research. The tool itself states that users may not alter it in any way or create derivative works without permission.

Learn More: Age-based norm-reference values are published (Pados, Thoyre & Park, 2018), which is unusual for a free caregiver-report feeding tool and is what makes a ChOMPS score interpretable against peers rather than just descriptive.