Welcome to Sensory-Based Feeding Strategies for Home-Based Success!
This website is here to make feeding time a little easier and to decrease caregiver stress. We break down what sensory processing and feeding challenges really mean in simple, everyday language, and share practical tips you can try at home—like food chaining, playful food exploration, and gentle desensitization. You’ll find handouts, videos, activities, and real-life examples, all created to give you confidence and ideas for helping your child build positive mealtime experiences.
Understanding Sensory Processing and Feeding Behaviors
Sensory processing difficulties occur when the brain has trouble receiving, interpreting, or responding to sensory information from the environment or the body. For children, this can affect how they experience textures, tastes, smells, and even the look or feel of food. these challenges often contribute to picky eating, food aversions, and difficulty trying new foods, as certain sensory experiences may feel overwhelming, uncomfortable, or even distressing.
In mealtime settings, sensory processing difficulties may look like:
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Refusing certain textures (e.g., rejecting mushy foods like oatmeal or mashed potatoes
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Becoming upset by strong food smells
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Eating only specific brands or presentations of a food (like only star-shaped chicken nuggets).
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Avoiding messy hands or needing foods separated on the plate.
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Showing stress or discomfort with noisy or visually busy mealtime environments.
Making Sense of Food Jags, Gagging, and Food Chaining
Food jags are when a child eats the same food over and over but suddenly refuses it , sometimes permanently. For example, a child may eat macaroni and cheese for weeks at a every meal but then abruptly stop eating it altogether. This often happens when a limited diet creates burnout or boredom with that food.
Gagging during meals can be a sensory response as well as a physical one. Children who are sensitive to certain textures may gag when trying foods that fell "too slimy" (like scrambled eggs) or "too lumpy" (like yogurt with fruit pieces). Sometimes gagging occurs even before tasting, simply from the smell or sight of the food.
Food chaining is a way to help children try new foods by starting with foods they already like and making small, gradual changes. For example, if a child likes plain pasta, you might add a little cheese, then try pasta with a mild sauce, and eventually introduce new pasta shapes or vegetables. Step by step, they learn to accept new flavors, textures, and foods without feeling overwhelmed.
What is desensitization and its's impact on feeding therapy?
Desensitization is a technique used in feeding therapy to help children gradually become more comfortable with foods, textures, smells, or other sensory experiences that may feel overwhelming. By slowly and safely exposing a child to these sensations in small steps, desensitization can reduce food aversions, decrease anxiety around mealtimes, and help children explore and accept a wider variety of foods.
For example, a child who avoids crunchy foods might fist explore touching crackers with, their hands, then smelling, then licking or taking very small bites before eventually eating a whole piece. this step-by-step process helps their brain and body adjust to the new sensory experience without feeling overwhelmed.
Sensory aversion can cause strong reactions of finding certain food textures, smells, or appearances extremely uncomfortable or even distressing. These strong reactions can lead to avoidance behaviors and increased stress at mealtimes. The gag reflex can also be a part of the process, as some children may have an overactive gag reflex, causing them to gag when trying certain textures, sizes, or inconsistencies of food, even before the food reaches the back of the mouth. Desensitization can help reduce this over-response by building tolerance gradually.
Through desensitization, children learn to experience foods in a safe, manageable way, which can decrease aversive reactions and make mealtimes more positive and successful.
