Play with your food
Brenda Banks, OTR/L
Across the generations, playing with your food was once a faux pas— something that was discouraged by our parents, grandparents, teachers, and society as a whole due to scarcity of food and the risk of being labeled with bad manners. Now, parents of children with picky eating, sensory food aversion, ARFID, food neophobia, and the like are being encouraged by occupational therapist, speech therapists, dieticians, and family physicians to engage their children in playing with their food. Research suggests that the increase in incidence of these disorders is partially due to a lack of sensory food play, i.e., not allowing our children to play with and explore their food. Other child related factors include emotional problems, behavioral problems, sensory modulation, tactile and oral defensiveness, and anxiety, just to name a few, as well as environmental factors at mealtimes such as food availability and parental stress and anxiety play an important role.
From an occupational therapist’s perspective, food play encourages the engagement of all 5 senses and provides the child with the autonomy to make food choices for themselves— here are a few tips to help your child learn to play with their food and promote positive food and mealtime experiences.
Create a “no pressure” environment. Express to your child that there are no expectations for them to actually eat the food that they are presented with. If they do not taste even one lick of the food, that is 100% ok. Do not ever force or coerce your child to touch, taste, or eat the food as this only creates increased resistance. The goal here is to create positive interactions with food which in the long run creates more acceptance and willingness to try new foods.
Play with your food with your child. The #1 way that our children learn is by watching what we do as parents. If a child sees their parents’ hesitation or senses their parents’ anxiety about food, inevitably, those are the emotions that our children will gravitate towards. We should be exposing our children to a variety of foods despite our personal preferences either for or against specific foods.
During food play, encourage your child to describe the item/s from a multisensory view— Is it hot or cold? Is it lumpy or smooth? Does it have a big smell or a little smell? Is it colorful or plain? Is it crunchy or soft? And so on and so forth. Being able to describe what we like and/or don’t like about foods is an important skill which can increase development not only in food acceptance but also social and emotional learning throughout the years.
Allow your child to clean themselves up when food play is completed. One of the downsides for a child to engage in messy or tactile play, is the thought of being cleaned afterwards. If the child has the control of wiping off their face with a napkin, wipe, washcloth, etc., this significantly decreases the anxiety associated with clean up.