Feeding Therapy 101

To my ex feeding clients: May you forever remember to eat healthy

To my current feeding clients: Keep up the good fight. This battle is best fought swift and hard.

NOTE: After reading this blog, download the form at the bottom to track progress.

Quick Overview:

1. Lead by example

2. Sensory

3. Temperature

4. Variety

5. Environment

6. Play

7. Energy

8. Access able food

9. Timeline

10. Your mission

    
    

---

Lead by example

Trying new foods in front of your kids shows them that you're no hypocrite. You are somebody who says that it's important to try new things then follows that up with action. Have good table manners and have good conversations around the dinner table so that your kid will also have these mannerisms. Kids are programmable. Don't underestimate how many of your unconscious mannerisms transfer to your children. Your child with autism may pick up on less cues than the average person which is all the more reason to lead by example.

Sensory

Foods texture matters both when touched by the hands and when felt by the tongue. Autism usually comes with a side of varied sensory abilities. Some Autistic people have over sensitive touch, taste, and smell. Keep this in mind when feeding somebody with Autism. Pay special attention to your kiddo to see if they do any of the following:

• Cover their nose or runs away from smells

• Hesitate greatly to certain things touching their tongues

• Won't touch certain textures

• Seems generally uncoordinated

Sensory Blog

Part of sensory is the texture of different foods is perceived as pleasurable or not.

Fruits may be

• Smooth fruits: grapes, apples, blueberries, coconut

• Soft/slimy fruits: mangos, bananas, pears, peaches

• Rough/bumpy texture fruits: strawberries, blackberries, raspberries

• Crunchy fruits: apples, pomegranate, unripen honeydew, cantaloupe, or nectarines 

• Wet/Juicy fruits: pineapple, overripe berries, pears, oranges, kiwis, watermelon  

Meat may be

• Tough

• Tender

• chewy

• saucy

You are able to play with the texture of various foods. For instance, your child may not eat raw carrots but they may eat them in the oven, or air fryer, or steamed. They may like chicken if it is soft and easy to chew but not if it is dry and crunchy. Play with these variables to figure out your kids palate.

Another way to play with texture is through "Crumbs". You can add small crumbs of a new food to a smooth food your kid already eats. For example, light bits of almonds in yogurt. If your kid thinks that would be extreme then you can crumb with a more meltable crumb. Something like crushed cheerio's or tiny berry crumbs. The point is this. Some kids only eat certain textures and you can slowly change that texture into the texture of the food you want them to eat.

Temperature

I will eat a cold can of chili from 3 years ago, my kids will not. Play with the temperature of your child's food and pay special attention to when they say things are too hot or too cold. If a kids accustomed to eating what I call cupboard foods

(chips, granola bars, cereal)

then they are not going to be used to hot foods. If this is the case then it may be a good idea to introduce foods first that are warm then that grow hotter over time.

Variety

It can be easy as parents to feed the same meal week after week, especially if it's accepted and fairly nutritious. Adding variety teaches kids about all of the different foods out there and allows them to explore through eating. The added variety also increases the potential for diversified vitamin intake.

Environment

We want our children to be able to see their food clearly, have utensils on display, and feel safe to eat. The environment should be free from distractions so that the child can engage in the sensory experience that is eating. We want to eat with them whenever possible and create positive interactions with food. In a textbook world, kids would sit in a seat with 90-90-90 posture across from their adult.

Check out this totally real picture of me at work.

Let's be honest though. Our hair isn't that nice and were about 10 pounds heavier.

Realistically here are some environmental tips.

• Use eating in front of the TV as a tool and do so less than half the time.

  • *The reason we don't want to overuse this tool is because our children's senses are less integrated with eating when we distract.

    
    

• When eating at the table, try and give each kid plenty of space.
  

Play

Play is the building block of a pediatric occupational therapists career. We play to let kiddo's know it's not so serious. Notice when the mood gets harsher and use play to wiggle out of the funk.

There are key moments when play helps.

• The moment has become too serious (usually because adult has poor energy)

• The child is unwilling to even touch the food

  • Playing gets them to touch it, kiss it, lick it, and maybe even eat it.

• The child looks incredibly bored at the dinner table

What does it look like to "play" at the dinner table? Crack a joke, smile, put a dot of red on your nose and say your a clown.

Energy

Kids feed off your energy. You are literally dripping energy all the time that little sponges soak up. I am fully convinced after working with kids for a living that energy matters more than anything. Notice what energy's you have around food. Tonight, my daughter wasn't eating her pork while I was working from home. I stepped out there and she fed off my energy. I was able to step in and hear her out for a moment and was willing to try it if we took off the breading.

Now for a less heroic tale:

My daughter recently video taped us when none of us were paying attention. In the video, she was saying how much she loved the protein pancakes my wife was cooking. None of us noticed her say it even though we were all within hearing distance. We were busy on amongst ourselves in our grown up heads worrying about grown up things.

That would have been a grade A opportunity to make positive interaction around food but we missed it.

So keep an eye out, you never know where opportunity lurks to make a positive food interaction.

Accessible food

We want to build independent kids around eating. Have them help you cook if feasible. Try having good food accessible. Some fruit, nuts, and dark chocolate nearby goes a long way in healthy eating. At the same time we need to put junk foods far away. Pizza boxes stay out of sight of little eyes as do cookies.

Timeline

It's at about this point I imagine the reader wants to know how fast will their kid eat good foods. Well, there are too many factors to count for me to accurately predict that for you. What I can say is this:

1. Your personal Ideal of "eating good" needs to be self-defined. In other words, please take the time to set your own feeding goals for your kid. Are you happy when he eat's 2 fruits and 3 vegetable's and 2 meats? What about if she/he will try any food once but won't eat large amounts of it? Think about this for yourself.
   

2. The length of time between now and your goal being met depends on how hard you hit the ground running. I have had parents ditch all processed foods in their house and hit their goals in 3 months time. Other parents find that approach too harsh and they decide to slowly integrate healthy foods. They are more on a 9-12 month timeline but the goal still gets hit if they're persisting.

Your mission

We want the kids to associate positive emotions with the foods. Feeding our kids unconsciously usually results in treating food however our parents did.

GROSS!

Their parenting techniques came from a world where everybody lived on a farm and nobody had a phone. News flash :) Were living in the future and that comes with the following problems.

1. hyperprocessed foods that are so good that our kids underdeveloped brains can't handle not craving them to no end.

2. None of us have the time to cook 3 meals a day or the money to pay for pre-cooked foods.

3. Many of us have a list of unhealthy habits that wreck our energy levels.

So here's your mission if you so choose to accept it. Convince an undeveloped brain that the Dorito or ice cream dumping feel good chemicals is not what they want. Instead they want this hard to eat food that tastes meh.

Good luck and Godspeed. Don't forget to print and use the resource below.

food file.docx

Download DOCX • 4KB