Is your child’s picky food a problem in oral motor skills?

Is your child exaggerating or is there a cause for the poor eating behavior?

Maybe you recognize it in your family. One child eats what the pot serves, while the other child is a fussy and picky eater.

You will often wonder why your one child makes such a problem of eating. Is it an oral motor skills problem or is it a sensory problem? And how can you, as a parent, best deal with your child’s picky eating behavior?

In this article, I will tell you more about the differences between picky eating as a motor problem and as a sensory problem.

The eating process consists of a complex collection of motor movements and sensory components. When eating is a challenge for your child, there may be problems in oral motor skills as well as problems in sensory information processing.

What does oral motor skills mean?

Oral motor skills (oral motor skills) refer to how we use the muscles in our mouths. This includes the tongue, lips, cheeks, and jaw. They are all parts of our mouth and are tied to tons of muscles, and like any muscle, it can be strong or weak, coordinated or uncoordinated.

Good oral motor skills are necessary to be able to talk, eat or drink with a straw.

Picky eating: a problem in oral motor skills

Problems in oral motor skills can lead to difficulties in biting, chewing, and manipulating food. They can cause problems processing food with different textures. And can be a cause of picky eating!

Think of the child who keeps his mouth shut during meals. This is usually the biggest sign for a parent that the child is completely done eating, is full, or refuses to eat. However, it can also be an oral motor problem that is actually the cause of the clamped mouth. The child falls back on this technique because in the past it worked in a certain way to avoid the oral motor problems.

We use the muscles of our lips and tongue to pronounce letters, swallow, chew, suck through a straw etc. When the mouth muscles are not properly developed, are used incorrectly, are affected by a muscle disease or no longer function (properly) after a cerebral infarction/stroke, problems can arise with intelligible speech and while eating and drinking. Wrong habits can also have a negative effect on the position of jaws and/or teeth.

Problems with/due to oral motor skills can be:

The motor problems below are just a few of the problems that can affect your child’s eating behavior

• Difficulty swallowing certain foods
• Problems with chewing
• Dropping food from the mouth while eating
• Pureeing food with the tongue
• Swallowing the wrong
• Sucking on food instead of chewing
• Holds food in the mouth sometimes, sometimes for hours
• Gagging after food has been in the mouth
• Mouth is often in an open position (little force on the lips)
• Tongue hangs out of the mouth
• Difficulty sticking out the tongue
• Never chewed on toys or teething toys as a baby
• Difficulty learning to eat baby food as a baby and toddler
• Preference for certain texture of food (crunchy or soft)
• Difficulty drinking from a straw (if over 24 months of age)
• Drooling (consider only in combination with other factors on this list, as drooling can have many different possible causes)
• Sucks on food instead of chewing
• Not being able to blow through the nose
• Noisy eating (smacking)

Fussy eating as a sensory problem

The eating process appeals to no less than 3 different senses. [Read about the 8 senses we have here].

For children with problems in stimulus processing, it is therefore not surprising that eating can lead to problems. Children can be hypersensitive to stimuli in the mouth area or undersensitive.

Signals that indicate picky eating as a stimulus processing problem

The following characteristics may indicate a problem in sensory stimulus processing:

• Preference for certain flavors (bland food or very spicy)
• Difficulty with, for example, the pieces of fruit in the yogurt
• Doesn’t like brushing teeth
• Licks objects
• Bites or chews on non-edible products (child older than 3 years) [Read our tips for chewing needs]
• Nail biting [read here why children chew].

-> Read our tips for children with a tactile stimulus processing problem

-> Read our tips for picky eaters with stimulus processing problems

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