Useful and helpful guide picky eating

This book looks at the range of approaches to help children with extreme picky eating. It's most important message is that it's important not to put pressure on the child to feed. For many children it's like offering them a spoonful of roasted spiders, worms or even vomit. What would be your response to someone offering you a worm sandwich - it might help you to understand how your child feels about the food you might be offering them. Most of us enjoy food, but for some children it is associated with unpleasant feelings, it is not enjoyable and no matter how many times a parent tries to beg their child to eat, they simply refuse. And the pressure we force on the child to eat, becomes a vicious battle and further reinforces that child not wanting to eat. Many of these children might need a range of different approaches to help them feed.

As a speech and language therapist with an interest in working with children with eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties - I am always interested in books like this. When describing a child feeding journey it is better to shape the normal development of how children take food and drink. Children in the early stages of eating often prefer carbohydrates such as pasta and cookies, which is something I've also experienced when working with children with sensory feeding difficulties. It's important to consider the feeding temperament and that some children would prefer soft, squishy food and others prefer dry food, some children would prefer a range of foods and others limited to a small range of foods. These children will often have other sensory issues such as being overwhelmed by tags or labels on clothes, hair dryer noises or absolutely detest having a haircut or teeth cleaned. In many ways these children develop a phobia and anxiety around foods, in the same way some people have around spiders and heights. It's worth considering all of these as the way your child will probably respond to food and that these levels of temperament will probably stay with them for life. So a child who is anxious will be anxious around other things also.

A child with an oral motor tone difficulties means they won't have the same sensory neural input which means they can't necessarily sense where food is in their mouth which then means they have a problem breaking food down into a smooth consistency with a swallow that may lead to gagging or choking. These can then lead to an ineffective pattern of feeding. However please note that many babies will go through a period of choking on food in the early stages of weaning because first tastes are sensitive and they might react to food in a similar way as you might have in a cup of coffee with 10 spoonfuls of coffee added to it. You gag and similar in babies, it is often harmless and part of the feeding process. However, if a parent becomes anxious, the child becomes anxious too - this can be picked up even in infants as young as 6 months. They can be hypersensitive and they need time to get used to different tastes and textures and co-ordinate the complex dance that is involved in eating. The book author mentions the one blood test you should look at would be to see if the child has an iron deficiency, this can greatly impact on swallowing ability and feeding regulation. The useful book with some useful ideas on how to help support a child with a feeding difficulty.

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