A child needs your guidance and support to learn life skills. The parents of young children are sometimes worried about their child holding food in their mouth (food pocketing).
WHAT IS FOOD POCKETING?
The food pocketing is when a child holds food in mouth instead of swallowing it. Sometimes they keep the food in mouth for hours. Children will hold their food in cheeks or keep it in front of their gums or behind their gums.
WHAT KIDS HOLD THEIR FOOD IN MOUTH?
There can be couple of reasons for food pocketing behavior of a child. Lets see what are the common causes of food pocketing issues:
ORAL SENSORY PROCESSING: Some children do not understand the texture of the food while others can not feel the food inside their mouth. Some kids food pocket because it gives them a soothing comfort. Due to pressure on their tongue, cheeks, or gums they feel soothing sensation. Different flavors and smell of a food is being processed in their brain as dis-pleasurable in some way.
ORAL MOTOR SKILLS: Its about using the muscles of the mouth(tongue, lips, cheeks and jaws) properly. These muscles helps us to talk, eat, and drink. Like any other muscles these muscles can be strong or weak.
HOW TO STOP HABIT OF FOOD PCOKETING IN KIDS?
The food pocketing issue can be resolved following a few exercises and by changing the eating habits of the child. I am sharing a few tips with you to overcome this problem. I have tried all these tricks with children facing food pocketing and it has given positive results. You can use these exercises as a game to make it easy and interesting for the child.
1. TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOUR CHILD:
It is common if a child is not eating properly we lose patience and we become frustrated. As an adult, we need to understand the root cause of the problem and unnecessary losing your patience is not going to give any positive results.
2. ORAL SENSORY ACTIVITIES:
Exercise-1: Use your finger to gently massage the child's gums for 3-4 minutes (as per child's comfort).You can repeat this exercise 2-3 times a day.
Exercise-2(Lingual sweep): In this exercise, the child is supposed to move the tongue in between the gums and the lips for sweeping motion. It’s a great exercise for a child’s tongue lateralization.
Exercise-3: Let your child drink water/liquids using a straw, or you can give them lollipops/natural chew gums that will help for lip strengthening(twisty straws will be more helpful.)
Exercise-4: Give them to drink hot/cold water, different texture and tastes of food (as per child's comfort) to stimulate oral sensation.
Exercise-5: To enhance their jaw strength, try giving them harder food items(carrots, cucumber, apples, etc.) is effective. You can also play blow the bubble/candle game with the child.
Exercise-6: One of the most traditional activities is to thread a cereal necklace for the child. Your young bud will munch the hard cereal and thus it will help in oral sensation. It is one of the classic and effective but forgotten activity. Be careful with the cereal size and length of the necklace to avoid any choking hazard.
3. REMOVAL OF DISTRACTIONS:
Whenever you are feeding your child, you also need to be away from any distraction. You should avoid using mobile, TV, or any other distraction diverting the child's attention.
Exercise-1: Talk to your child about healthy eating habits. You need to tell them by food pocketing germs will grow in their mouth and it will spoil their teeth. You can use the play-way method, by stuffing food in the doll's mouth and explain it will produce germs and will choke if not eaten properly.
Exercise-2: You need to explain the child about the proper way for chewing, and swallowing using actions. Model doing it yourself, with exaggerated movement.
Exercise-3: Always serve small bites to the child and repeat the words- "chew", "swallow" to keep child attentive towards food. The smaller bites will decrease food pocketing. Always let your child drink a sip of water once done with chewing and swallowing.
4. SET THE TARGETS:
You need to set targets like:
1. Every day note the time taken by the child to finish the meal.
2. Try to make a food time table and make sure the child eats food at the same time every day. This will trigger the child's brain and thus helps to build good feeding habit in the child.
3. Keep your menu full of flavors your child loves and try to offer different yummy healthy food items to spark interest.
4. If your child is fond of butter or any sticky food items it is really beneficial for them. As the item
will stick on the roof of the mouth and child’s tongue will response to this reflex action.
Besides all these tactics and exercises there are few tools available in the market to enhance a child’s oral senses. Z-vibe, vibrating toothbrush, chew toys, whistles are some of the tools you can use to resolve food pocketing issue.
5. You can use open cup as it will flood the mouth of child with water and will pull all the pocketed food inside the gut.
6. Alternative bites of food they like for example maybe they like to eat apple so you can alternate the bite of apple and their favorite food.
I hope our blog will be helpful for you to deal with food-pocketing.
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