Any ideas for oral stimulation?

[JSerene]

My 4 year old can't eat at all. She's been off food for 2 months and we may not reintroduce any food for as long as 10 months. She's fed through a G-tube. Her problem now is the need for oral stimulation. She's started chewing on her hair and putting her fingers and toes in her mouth, which we need to stop. I tried straws, but that didn't work. Her OT people said to try www.smartmomjewelry.com which has cool necklace teethers, but these are in the shapes of doughnuts, or hearts and not really the shape to really play with in her mouth. Anyone have any creative ideas?

[MotherWhimsey]

There's something called a Z-vibe that is a vibrating oral stimulator that has changeable heads. My son has one somewhere around here and goes through phases where it's just the best thing ever (he doesn't eat either and never really has). The fact that the heads are interchangable is nice because if you feel like a hard one, you put that one on... if you feel like a bristly one, you put that one on.

They're a little expensive, but oh so totally worth it in the long run.

[MotherWhimsey]

Z-vibe

textured chew toy

scented chew toy

[MotherWhimsey]

chewy tube we have four different kinds of these, they're very durable.

z-vibe cat and mouse tip we don't have this one but it looked cool for a 4 year old.

purple z-vibe with textured handle this looks way cooler than the plain metal one!

[K-Mom3]

My 3 yo is chewing her clothes up and so I recently started looking for some solutions here, too. First, I got out a bunch of baby teething toys and she likes those sometimes. She found some baby bottle nipples in a drawer and likes to chew on those.

Just last week I made her a chewy necklace. I got some ideas from these websites.

Make a cheap chewing necklace

stimming necklace using Theraband Tubing

I ended up getting some theraband tubing from a local physical therapy business. They sell it by the foot, the price differs depending on how thick it is. The one I bought was only $1/foot. I cut a 6 inch piece, boiled it and made her a necklace. She likes the necklace...but she also really liked chewing the tube before I even put it on the necklace. I may go back and get more.

I also make sure to praise her when she chews on it, to help her not go back to chewing her clothes.

[coreybreeze]

There are really inexpensive vibrating toothbrush in kid-characters out there. The ones we have are made by colgate (or crest or one of those) and are carried at our local grocery store.

[JSerene]

Thank you! I was totally unable to find any of this through internet searches. Yay.

[Momily]

We went through this, although DS was much younger, but not being able to feed a child who is eager to eat is really hard, I'm sorry you're going through this too.

My son didn't do these, because he was younger, but I'd think about lots of blowing and sucking games. Some that we use in the classroom for sensory seeking kids include:

Bubble painting: Mix some tempera with some water and dish soap, and use a straw to blow bubbles, then make prints of the bubbles by lightly touching a piece of white paper to the pile.

Blow hockey/blow mazes: Try an use breath control to move a ping pong ball where you want it to go -- maybe draw a maze, or play soccer, hockey and try an blow the ball into a goal. An added advantage to this is the child's weight is usually on their forearms, which is great proprioceptive pressure which is soothing to lots of kids.

Blow tic tac toe: Use a straw to pick up cotton balls and place them where you want to place them on a tic tac toe board -- or use them to play checkers.

Hovercraft: Take a paperplate, put it upside down, and cut a hole in the top. Fit a paper tube into the hole at an angle, trim the part that goes through the hole so it's flush and tape it really well so no air leaks out when you blow into it, but all the air comes out under the paperplate. Put it on a smooth surface, and blow and the paperplate should float and move across the floor (while you crawl after it, still blowing).

Good luck!