My Child Won’t Eat!

MY CHILD WONT EAT!  Some tips/techniques to help!

No parent imagines that feeding their child is going to be a difficult task.  I look back at my own childhood and remember loving food at a young age. There was no meal that I would refuse.  However, after becoming a speech pathologist and working with kids of both sensory and behavior difficulties, I realized how many children are affected by feeding aversions. Some children avoid food for sensory reasons, such as the smell, the touch, or the taste. Others refuse a food for behavioral reasons, JUST BECAUSE.  No matter what the issue, it’s an issue, so let’s talk about a couple of suggestions or strategies that may help. Aversions that last past the picky stage are where feeding therapy in Chicago starts, with small steps toward tolerating a food.

• Don’t force your child to eat the target food. If you push your child, he will push back.  If it’s a sensory issue, your child may literally gag at the smell or sight of the food.  This requires some desensitization, and it may take time.
• Always have a preferred food item on the plate when you’re introducing a new food. If you want your child to try eating broccoli and he dislikes it, but he loves mac and cheese, then have some mac and cheese on the plate.  It can be daunting for a child to look at a scary plate of unfamiliar foods.  We are working on success for your child, right? Allow him to feel comforted that something familiar is on his plate.
• Introducing a new food can be messy … and that is OKAY! Kids learn through play, and if a food is aversive to them, it first has to be tolerated and then interacted with.  If food stamping with vegetables with a plateful of paint is the only way your child currently can tolerate vegetables, then let it be!  Let me share with you a success story….

The child pictured below does NOT like broccoli in the least.  Any attempts to feed her were met with spitting the broccoli out of her mouth and refusal.  However, she would willingly touch the broccoli, so we used that as a starting point.  We decided to have her engage in a messy food play activity in order make broccoli seem like it was “fun.”  We made a picture using vegetables to stamp with paint (i.e., broccoli for trees, carrots for sun, mushrooms for flowers).  Then we, made our own edible paint using vanilla yogurt and Koolaid.  She mixed the yogurt and Koolaid together with her finger and used the broccoli to do more stamping.  We alternated between her stamping and licking the yogurt off of the broccoli.  Finally, I said “Time to take a bite!” And she did…not only one bite, but five little bites of broccoli without spitting it out.  These pictures show her eating the broccoli and then her proud face after eating it.  With patience, it is possible!

Information based on strategies behind the SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) feeding protocol

Small changes at the table, repeated calmly, help a reluctant eater more than pressure at any single meal. The techniques here follow the thinking behind the SOS feeding approach, which treats eating as a set of learned steps. Choose two ideas and stay with them for a few weeks. If mealtimes stay hard, talk to our feeding therapists and describe what has already been tried. You will hear back with practical next steps for meals at home.