Helping Support Positive Eating Behaviors in Your Child

Occupational Therapy
Written By Vicky Moroz

Feeding is a critical part of your child’s daily routine. It can be very frustrating when a child refuses to eat or has a meltdown every day around mealtimes. Feeding difficulties are prevalent in children with autism or those with sensory processing sensitivities. Sensory sensitivities can cause your child to have difficulty being exposed to foods because of their taste, smell, or texture. This can cause negative behaviors around meals.

 

If your child struggles with eating, here are some tips to help make mealtimes a bit easier!

 

Rule out other medical conditions

There are many issues that can be causing difficulty with eating that have nothing to do with sensory sensitivity. If your child is struggling, it could be a wide range of things causing feeding problems. This could include dental or digestive issues that cause physical pain for your child, making them not want to eat.

 

Make meals a routine.

Children do well with routines as they know what to expect from their day. Children also learn by watching others. By having a regular meal routine and including a family dinner, the child learns how they are expected to behave. These meals shouldn’t have distractions, such as TV. If meals are causing a lot of anxiety, get in the habit of doing a relaxing activity beforehand to help the child make the transition into the meal.

 

Avoid letting your child snack all day long so that they have an appetite when the main meals of the day come around.

 

Don’t indulge in your child’s negative behaviors and encourage positive behavior.

Your child may try to throw a fit or behave disruptively during mealtimes to try to get out of eating. The best thing to do is to ignore negative behavior or correct it appropriately. Show them that that type of behavior will not get them out of mealtime. On the other hand, when a child behaves well or tries something new, encourage them.

 

Expose your child to new foods.

Introduce your child to new foods through touch and play. If they have trouble with sensory sensitivity, introducing new foods by encouraging any sort of interaction with the food is a great way to start expanding your child’s diet. If your child doesn’t like a food because of color or texture, exposing them to it through play is a great first step. Let them make a mess and reward them even if they simply smell or touch the food.

 

Another way to expose your child to new foods is by expanding on the foods your child already likes. If your child likes strawberries, but hasn’t tried yogurt, serve the yogurt with the strawberries.

 

Avoid food rituals.

Food rituals are a way that children sometimes reduce the anxiety of the situation by creating a ritual surrounding food, such as only eating foods of a certain color, eating everything on a certain plate, eating only certain brands, or only eating cold foods. However, if these rituals are not followed, even more anxiety arises.

 

Give your child a choice.

If meals are overwhelming for your child, giving them a choice helps them feel less powerless and gives them a say in this daily routine. For example, serve 3 different foods, 2 that they like and 1 new food. Give them a choice on what is being served, but make it known that they must try something new or something that they think they won’t like. Cutting food into smaller bites when serving is also helpful.

Vicky Moroz

Vicky works closely with a group of EJ’s therapists to curate helpful content geared towards parent education and research-based writing.

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