Food & Texture Issues

[Way Up North]

DD is 30 months and still has texture issues with foods.
She had nasty reflux until about 15 months adnd never did well with thick or lumpy foods. She still has issues with anything dry or hard (ie carrots, even apple slices). She will chew and chew but always spits them out, sometimes gags.
Is this normal to still have at 2.5? Anything we can do tohelp her along?

L

[aris99]

Hi,

My 4.5 yo ds has sensory issues, major food aversions and something therapists call oral defensiveness. At 2.5 yo he ended up in hospital w/nutritional deficiencies. The Drs told us he'd require a feeding tube. He had HORRIBLE reflux as a baby but his ped said it was w/n the normal range and didn't recommend any treatment.

I'm not saying that any of this will happen to your child but I know how difficult food issues can be. Some of the things we tried were occupational therapy, feeding programs and I took my son to a ped GI Dr to make sure he wasn't still experiencing reflux. None of these things worked very well for us. Instead I have come up w/a smoothie that contains all the vits and mins, protein, fats (EFA's) etc that I could stick in there and slowly, very slowly my son recovered from the deficiencies and he is VERY SLOWLY adding foods to his repertoire.

My son also still has the gagging reaction to a lot of foods but it is lessening. I don't push him to eat because it doesn't work. It backfires. The ped GI that saw my son said that if a child doesn't have any physical GI probs, eventually 95% of kids will outgrow their problems. They may always be slow to try knew things and they may not want to eat a variety of things but they will overcome most of their aversions. I've learned to go at my son's pace.

I'd recommend finding a vit/min supplement that your dd can take and try to get her evaluated by early intervention. EI is available usually to kids under 3.

HTH a little!

[LynnS6]

I would think about seeking out an occupational therapist for this. Food aversions can be really hard to deal with, and sometimes just having a professional who's not as emotionally involved can really help. I wonder too that she can't chew and swallow hard food.

There's also a good book called "Just Take a Bite" that addresses some of these kinds of food issues. The key is to realize that this is more than 'just' picky eating.

[glorified_rice]

My son is three and still has issues with food textures. He has trouble with hard things, meat and can't stand things like yogurt or like you mentioned..really lumpy foods. I think it's still pretty normal and I don't worry about it too much.

[Way Up North]

Thanks mamas, we'll talk to the doctor about it. She eats a reasonable variety of foods, because we just work around it, kwim? The gagging and spitting seem to be a matter of inability rather than aversion ~ she *likes* carrots and will chew and chew but never swallow. I just haven't seen any progress in a long time... (it took us forever to get her off of purees!).

L