Tailoring Food Play to Meet a Child’s Unique Needs
Grasping the logic behind the use of food play is crucial for its effectiveness as a therapeutic tool. In my summer newsletter, I emphasized the numerous advantages of food play, such as fostering graded and positive interactions with food, creating a sense of safety around food, and cultivating a rich vocabulary to articulate food experiences. Now, we will delve into the professional rationale that informs the application of food play tailored to individual needs.
To align food play with a child's requirements, understanding the underlying reasons for a child's eating and mealtime challenges is vital. My assessments of the child and their family dynamics often reveal the primary issues to address. This understanding is pivotal, as it steers the treatment plan, including the selection of foods, the modeling of interactions, and the progression of food play activities. It's also fundamental for educating parents and the care team. Simply put, food play varies because the eating and mealtime needs of children are diverse.
Let’s dive into what food play might look like when we work with a child who has oral motor skills as a primary area that impacts their eating and mealtime participation capacities. Recently I provided occupational therapy services for a young child who had this profile. When we started working together, he primarily ate pureed foods and experienced fear with foods that required chewing. For him, food play was one part of his treatment plan that met a variety of his needs. It provided one way for him to start to feel safe and comfortable around less familiar foods. I utilized Steps to Eating (Kay Toomey) while considering the unique factors I would need to take into account for food selection and how to offer types of food interactions to build his skills and confidence. When we started, we focused on exploring foods on the table without a focus on oral structures. I selected foods using a developmental framework so that if and when he wanted to explore the foods with his mouth, they would create safe opportunities to do so. We used meltables such as puffs to build with and to crush with our hands. We used hard munchables such as dried fruit to paint with and to make shapes. During this time I modeled safe interactions for his caregivers so they knew what to expect and how to create safe food interactions at home. As he became more comfortable being around food, he started to initiate oral food play on his own. We explored these same foods in new ways - licking, tug of war with the dried fruit, and holding food between our lips. These activities expanded his sense of safety and began allowing us to use foods as one tool to build his oral motor skills. I still remember the day he asked if he could bite off a piece of dried mango and he had the biggest smile with his idea and his success trying it!
Food play can be adapted to support children with sensory sensitivities, which significantly affect their comfort during eating and mealtimes. In therapy for a sensory-sensitive child, the approach might not seem different from that for a child focusing on oral motor development. However, a closer look would reveal nuances in how food play is conducted. The selection of food is based on its sensory attributes rather than the oral motor skills it requires. The food's properties are finely adjusted to align with the child’s sensory preferences concerning touch, smell, and taste. An example might include starting with subtle variations, such as offering crackers of different sizes that are otherwise identical, like mini and regular-sized Ritz. The FOCUS Program for Eating and Mealtime Success is employed, incorporating whole-body regulation activities into our sessions to aid their sensory processing before interacting with food. For an elementary-aged child I work with, food play follows activities that satisfy their need for regulation, such as swinging or spending time in a fort. We initiate food play by tapping into his intrinsic motivation, creating food art with familiar yet slightly different foods, like cucumbers and zucchinis. We emphasize developing descriptive language and observing minor changes in food—its cutting style or the effects of brief microwaving. These linguistic skills and interactions, combined with full-body sensory activities, have allowed food play to progress into more oral-centric food exploration and preparation. He thrives with incremental changes to well-known foods, using customary toppings, and engaging in meaningful food-related activities, like planning for a holiday.
To ensure food play creates a safe and positive experience that meets a child's needs, practitioners must apply their professional reasoning in guiding this method. It is vital to comprehend the child's individual profile and the needs affecting their mealtime experiences, and to proceed at a pace suitable for their developing nervous system. Additionally, understanding the role of food play within the broader context of a child's requirements is imperative.
References -
Toomey, K. (2006, Nov). When Children Won’t Eat: The SOS Approach to Feeding. Hartford, CT.
Goodrich, L., & May-Benson, T. (2020). The FOCUS Program for Eating and Mealtime Success: A Training Program. The SPIRAL Foundation.