Ask the Expert:

“With Thanksgiving and other holidays coming up, and most of them centered in some way or other around food, how can I get my child on the spectrum to be more receptive to trying new foods?”

Our Expert: Nancy Uttendorfer, MS, CCC-SLP, Head of our Communications/Speech Department

Eating a healthy, whole-foods diet has positive benefits across the lifespan. Many of our students on the autism spectrum have a lot of resistive behaviors around food.  The reasons are many: fear, unfamiliarity, rigidity, limited exploratory oral play, as well as taste, texture, smell and other sensory and motor issues.

Through our I-EAT program (Increasing- Exploration, Acceptance, Tolerance), Center for Spectrum Services classrooms create safe and gentle ways for our students to increase their comfort levels around common everyday foods.  We incorporate a variety of foods during simple and enjoyable activities to help our students explore the textures, smells, and tastes of a variety of foods.

We want our students to have good feelings about the food we introduce and to tolerate its presence.  Our goal is to create a fun and safe space where they will eat those foods when they feel ready. We encourage parents and caregivers to also provide sensory play opportunities at home to expose your children to a greater variety of foods.

These activities should be conducted at a time other than your typical mealtime, so your child doesn’t feel any expectation or pressure to eat the food. This will help your child to learn that mealtimes are structured for eating and food play/cooking time is for sensory exploration of food.

A “Try Plate” with a new food can be available within your child’s view and offered at mealtimes, but taken away if the child declines the offered food. We want to make it clear that there is no pressure to try the food.

Play and cook along with your children. Make funny faces on plates and take pictures of them afterward.  Have fun! Do not focus on your child eating the foods, but instead just relax and let them explore.

Model your own enjoyment while tasting the foods during play and cooking, but try not to introduce pressure by over-stating how “yummy” the food is or asking the child to “just try it”. Food play will quickly lose its fun factor if you start to focus on eating versus playing.

Always remember that these activities are presented in a gentle and non-confrontational way. Never force your child to participate. Suggestive and descriptive language can be used during these activities:

• You can try this.
• Yum, this smells good!
• You don’t have to touch it.
• I like to touch it…you can touch it, too!
• You can pass it to you friend
• You can put it on the “no thank you” plate.
• This is fun!
• This apple is juicy.

Here are some ideas:

• Feed puppets  and dinosaurs or any toys with a mouth
• Fruit salad/fruit kabobs(sing the Wiggles song: “Fruit Salad”)
• Potato Head body parts with real foods, like a banana
• Use figurines/action figures to create a food scene(e.g., Mario world pudding mud pit)
• Count anything! Cheerios, pieces of fruit, crackers…

For more ideas, and for information about our I-EAT program (Increasing- Exploration, Acceptance, Tolerance, please feel free to reach out to your Family Service Coordinator. We would be happy to help you get started with food exploration activities at home!