Does your child struggle with picky eating behaviors that seem to go beyond typical food preferences? Do mealtimes feel like a battle, with your child showing extreme reactions to certain foods? You might be witnessing sensory processing differences that are making eating a challenging experience for your little one.

The Connection Between Sensory Processing and Eating

Each individual has a unique sensory system, where they seek out certain inputs and are sensitive to others. This can be especially noticed with foods, because food and eating is sensory.

Each food has a very unique texture, smell, taste, and look, and can provide a child with a lot of sensory information. Sometimes this sensory aspect of food can make mealtimes more challenging for children to engage in, and can make family mealtimes complicated.

It is important to understand your child’s sensory signs when it comes to foods and mealtimes to ensure adequate intake, and regulation when eating and working on expanding diets.

If your child has a hard time regulating at meal times this can decrease their hunger cues significantly and therefore decrease their intake.

Key Takeaways

1. Sensory processing differences can significantly affect eating, as what seems like “picky eating” is often a nervous system response to sensory input.
   
2. Eating involves multiple sensory systems working together, as children process sights, textures, and smells before food reaches the mouth, sometimes triggering stress.
   
3. Signs such as finger retraction, turning away from food, or changing topics indicate a child experiencing sensory overload during mealtime challenges.
   
4. Pre-meal sensory preparation can improve eating experiences by using movement activities and environmental changes to help children approach meals in a calm state.

The Complete Sensory Journey of Eating

When you think of eating, many think of fork or hand to mouth chew and swallow, however, there are several steps that happen before that. If you think of a time you were presented with a meal at a restaurant, usually the first sensory system you are checking in with is your visual system. You may notice what color the food is, if it looks wet, if it looks like it has a certain texture.

The next system is typically touch, you may use your hand to touch the food to see what temperature it is, or to pick it up and bring it towards your face. Many times as adults we are using utensils and cutting this step out.

The next sense is smell, as the food approaches your face you are gaining information on how the food smells. Is its smell strong, or small. Does it smell sweet, salty, sour, etc? This is typically our first introduction to taste.

From here you may bring foods toward your face to take a bite, this gives you more taste information, as you are chewing the food you likely are back to noticing the texture and how this is changing as you break foods down. Then at this point once you have chewed food enough to manage a swallow it makes its way to your esophagus and stomach.

It’s important to note that this is a very simplified version of the process, but it pin points all of the sensory systems involved. Because foods are so sensory, mealtime challenges can be significant for children and you may notice decreased engagement with foods, eating and difficulty sitting still.

Recognizing Stress Cues in Sensory Processing

It is important to understand a child’s stress cues, and sensory responses to better help support them in learning about foods and expanding their diets.

Common stress cues related to sensory processing can be:

• Finger spreading and retraction of their hands after touching foods
• Inability to look at foods
• Turning head or body away from food presented
• Leaning back in chair
• Creating space, noted in wiggling at the table or getting up from the table
• Changing the topic of conversation to something completely different
• Grimace or change in facial expression following touch, smell or taste
• Saying yuck, gagging, etc
  

Practical Strategies for Supporting Your Child

Understanding food aversion and and eating challenges from a sensory processing perspective opens up new approaches to feeding therapy techniques you can use at home.

Pre-Meal Sensory Preparation

It is important to regulate sensory input for children prior to transitioning to the table for meals to provide a positive experience for both child and parent. These activities can be part of a sensory diet for kids—a planned set of sensory activities tailored to help them regulate.

Ways to provide sensory input prior to mealtimes include:

• Transitioning to the sink to wash hands by carrying a stool or doing animal walks
• Helping push chairs in prior to sitting or carrying objects to the table
• Wiping the table down with a towel and pressing plates into place for deep pressure input

These pre-meal sensory regulation strategies prepare the nervous system for eating, reducing stress responses and helping children feel more in control.

Tactile Support

Your child is pulling their hand away after touching food: Provide the child with a utensil to manipulate the food with. This allows them to feel safe while visually investigating a food and allows them to maintain regulation. After they are feeling comfortable with this step, you can model one finger poking and allowing them to always wipe their hands on a towel after.

Visual Support

Your child will not maintain visual gaze at the food presented:

• Try using a container where you can open and close it. Ask engaging questions about what they notice when you uncover it for a second
• Try engaging in play based learning with the food and allowing removal once they have reached their threshold into a covered snack container or plate so it is out of the field of view
• Ask them if they notice a change in smell when you open vs close a container
  

Olfactory Support

Your child has difficulty regulating with large food smells:

• Start with whole food, like an orange, poke holes to release increased smells
• Use a plate with a paper plate lid, or paper towel, place increased holes in it to release more smell. This is a great way to decrease visual involvement
• Have the plate closer to you and comment on the smell, then ask the child do you smell it from there? If no, inch it closer to see if it changes, this will allow them to wonder and engage in this task rather than worrying about the act of eating and ingesting food
  

Taste Support

The child is resistant to tasting and eating a food: Start with the stages prior to this above. Once those are successful, attempt small tastes by modeling and engaging in play:

• Place the food under your nose as a mustache this will increase smell and many times the child will get a taste from their upper lip
• Place a food between the lips then drop onto the plate
• Have them hide the food in their mouth then drop on the plate
• Try lizard licks, dinosaur bites, crunch competitions to see which food is louder, make it fun and focused on play while learning about the foods
  

Moving Forward with Understanding

Mealtime challenges rooted in sensory processing differences are not behavioral problems or phases children simply outgrow. They require understanding, patience, and sometimes professional help.

Working with an occupational therapist trained in sensory diet occupational therapy can give you a structured plan to help your child approach eating with more confidence. By recognizing your child’s unique sensory needs and implementing these strategies, you can transform mealtimes from stressful battles into positive experiences.

When food aversion persists or significantly impacts nutrition and family life, seek help from an occupational therapist who specializes in feeding and sensory processing.

Frequently Asked Questions