How this Boy’s Picky Eating Improved with these Oral Sensory Strategies

This article provides information about this little boy’s picky eating and how it relates to oral sensory problems. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

Oral sensory problems are becoming more common in many children. Most parents may not know sensory sensitivities are causing issues with the child’s oral sensory receptors, but they can sure see the symptoms.

A child who experiences oral sensory sensitivities is often labeled as a “picky eater.” They typically only eat around 10 items total and struggle with trying new foods. While other kids eventually grow out of their picky eating, kids with oral sensory problems will continue their “picky eating” habits into adulthood.

Signs of Oral Sensory Issues causing Picky Eating

When children lack sensory integration, it may also impact their sense of smell and taste. Many times, sensory dysfunction interferes with a child’s eating habits and nutrition, which can cause picky eating and even setbacks with speech and language development.

If a child has not built their oral sensory receptors or struggles with sensory sensitivities, you may notice the following:

• Child gravitates to bland and colorless foods (chips, breads, crackers, pretzels, etc.)
• Child often gags when eating or watching other people eat food
• Avoids extreme flavors (spicy, sour)
• Doesn’t like food being too hot or too cold
• Refuses to try new foods
• Avoids certain textures or colors of foods
• Craves sugar or has trouble with compulsive eating

Children who have symptoms of extreme picky eating could also have one or more retained Primitive Reflexes causing problems with oral sensory and picky eating. Some of these retained reflexes even impact how much the child eats and what they are open to trying.

In addition, a child can be hyposensitive or hypersensitive to foods they eat. If a child is hyposensitive to taste, they strongly object to different textures, flavors and temperatures. If a child is hypersensitive to taste, they tend to gravitate to foods with strong flavors, smells and textures because their system is under responsive.

Opening Up Oral Sensory Receptors

There are several ways to open up a child’s oral sensory receptors to help them with their sensitivities and picky eating. If the child is also experiencing setbacks with speech and language, you can utilize many of the same interventions to help kids with sounds, annunciation and articulation.

This past year, we worked with a young boy who had extreme sensory sensitivities and oral sensory setbacks. Not only did he struggle with oral sensory and speech and language, but sensory integration in general.

His parents said he would meltdown when playing in sand on the beach or when he got anything sticky, wet or slimy on his hands and body. He would immediately want to be washed off and could only handle certain textures for a few minutes at a time. This little boy only ate about 10 foods total and most of his diet would consist of bland or colorless foods (chicken nuggets, fries, breads and some fruit).

When it came to speech and language, he struggled with saying words with “TH,” “X,” and “L”. We also found he struggled in many of the following areas:

• Poor fine motor skills
• Mixed dominance (used both hands to write interchangeably)
• Retained Primitive Reflexes
• Weak core and gross motor skills
• Sensory Sensitivities to sand, sugar, slime, sticky items, etc.
• Wet the bed at night
• Speech and language challenges
• Oral Sensory trouble
• Eye tracking challenges
• Trouble with Attention and Focus

The more we worked with this little boy, the more the parents realized how his sensory sensitivities were impacting his every day life. Taking him to restaurants, working in the classroom, socializing with others and staying focused were all challenging.

Oral Sensory Challenges

After working on this child’s sensory integration and motor development to establish a stronger learning foundation, we began working on his speech and language along with his oral sensory sensitivities.

We found that when it came to oral sensory, he struggled with many of the following:

• Gagged when moving his tongue around his own mouth
• Had strong aversions to the smell of foods
• Couldn’t control the movements of his tongue, lips, and jaw
• Didn’t know how to click his tongue or put his tongue on the roof of his mouth to make the “L” sound
• Didn’t know the names of foods or how to describe foods (spicy, sour, grainy, crunchy, sticky)
• Avoided new foods
• Didn’t like the textures of wet, slimy or sticky foods

Knowing his individual needs gave us a starting point to help close the gaps when it came to picky eating and speech and language.

Important: When working with children at home or in therapy sessions, it’s important to help the child with interventions that specifically meet the specific and individual needs of the child. For this child, there were three interventions we knew could help build each foundational area, which are further discussed below. Even thought these methods worked for this child, you will still need to ensure these programs meet the needs of your child or students.

Oral Sensory Interventions

There are many activities and exercises you can try to help kids develop and improve their oral sensory receptors for sensory sensitivities and speech and language development. These three interventions are examples of what we used for this student’s specific needs and sensory situation.

Parents and therapists can use these intervention methods to also work with their children and students to improve sensory integration, oral sensory sensitivities, and speech and language.

Soundsory Sound Therapy Program

Many people use sound therapy programs to create a change in the brain for improving different areas. Using sound therapy programs can help organize the brain for better attention and focus, sensory motor development, emotional grounding and executive function. Sound therapy programs that work best include bone conduction headphones and acoustically modified music specifically geared to making a change in the brain. Regular headphones and music on a device or the radio do not provide the same brain-changing benefits.

For this student’s specific sensory needs, we used the Soundsory music program to help him become more grounded when it came to his sensory sensitivities and emotional development. After using the Soundsory program, the parents reported the following progressions:

• Was able to play in the sand for hours without having to be washed immediately.
• Had better interactions with friends and peers (branched out from solitary play)
• Calmed emotions, especially in stores and restaurants
• More open to textures and tactile stimulation

If you have a child or student who may also benefit from sound therapy, you can find out more details about Soundsory here. (Use code 3A6503610 for our member discount). For more about the microphone worked included in the images for speech, auditory processing and language output, click here (Use code 3A6503610 for our member discount).

Mealtime Works Program

The Mealtime Works Program created by Alisha Grogan, MOT, OTR/L, from Your Kid’s Table, was one of the most influential programs in helping open up the oral sensory receptors for picky eating and speech and language development. Once we knew how severe the oral sensory needs were and that there were muscles in the mouth that needed to be developed, this program became our main focus.

One of the primary elements of the course revolves around warm-up activities to awaken and activate the muscles of the mouth, tongue and jaw for better sensory integration. These exercises were key in helping this little boy strengthen the tongue, jaw and lips for speech and language development and for calming his gagging reflex.

After using the Mealtime Works Program, this boy was able to do the following:

• Say his “L”, “Th” and “X” sounds more proficiently when speaking and using annunciation and articulation.
• Place his tongue at roof of his mouth to say the “L” sound.
• Control movements of his tongue
• Could move the jaw in circles, follow tongue tapping activities, move the lips and teeth into position for pronouncing words and letter sounds.
• No longer gagged when doing warm-up activities or when watching others eat.
• Was able to handle new flavors, textures and temperatures.
• Became open to trying new foods.
• Could use descriptive words for foods.

To learn more about the warm-up activities we used with this student, check them out here or in the video above. The Mealtime Works program includes many other activities, exercises and strategies to help kids with oral sensory needs and picky eating. To get started with the Mealtime Works Program, check out Alisha’s free workshop The 3 Keys to Finally turn your Picky Eater Around here. For 5 surprising activities that can help picky eaters, click here.

Integrate with Success Program

Knowing this little boy had problems with sensory integration and sensory sensitivities, we used the Integrate with Success program to check him for retained Primitive Reflexes. He tested positive for five retained Primitive reflexes. Several of these reflexes were not only causing sensory sensitivities with his body, but also with his oral sensory receptors.

In combination with sensory integration exercises, we included exercises that targeted each retained Primitive Reflex until they were fully integrated. After working through the Integrate with Success program, the little boy improved in the following ways:

• Calmed emotions, behavior and better attention and focus.
• Better tracking ability, reading skills and retention.
• Calmed sensitivities to tactile stimulation and textures within his environment.
• Increased tolerance for different types of textures, flavors, smells and temperatures of foods.

When using reflex integration exercises to support learning areas, we also target the reflexes connected to problems with oral sensory issues and picky eating. This program served a dual purpose in helping both the foundation of the child as well as his sensory sensitivities for tactile and oral sensory.

If you have a child or student who may have one or more retained reflexes, you can get started by registering for the free workshop 3 Step Framework for Easy and Successful Retained Primitive Reflex Integration here.

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Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs