Play with Your Food!

"Play with your food!"  That's not a phrase you hear most parents use, but that's exactly what needs to happen...especially for kids with feeding difficulties.  I know this concept is difficult for parents.  I'm a Type A neat-freak and the last thing I want is Nutella and peanut butter smeared all over the table and chair!  However, kids need to play with their food so they can learn about it before they try to eat it.  Trying food means:  looking at it, touching it, smelling it, licking it, putting it into the mouth, and finally chewing and swallowing it.

Playing with Pasta
We eat a lot of pasta at our house.  Little Sister loves spaghetti, but Big Brother doesn’t want anything to do with cooked pasta (he’ll eat dry pasta because it’s crunchy).  One of our goals is to food chain with Big Brother so that he will accept pasta.  We’ve just started working our plan and here’s what we've done thus far.

Big Brother loves to read and point out letters he knows in books, so I thought I’d make “trying” pasta into a game.  Before we even started, I stressed that I didn’t expect him to eat the pasta…we were just going to have fun and play with it.  First, I poured some uncooked pasta in my hand and showed it to him.  I explained that it was letters – just like in his books.  Then I put the pasta into boiling water and cooked it.  I drained the pasta, ran some cold water over it so it was just warm, and put some on his plate.  He was hesitant to touch it.  I showed him how to look for various letters that he knew and he got excited about playing our new game.  He pushed several letters aside with one finger to locate one of his favorite letters.  Success!  (He’d never touched pasta with his fingers before.)  He quickly became tired of the game and wanted to wipe the food off hands, so we stopped.

A few weeks later...Big Brother is learning about shapes and loves shape sorting games so I cooked up pasta of various shapes (mini-ziti we called "pipes," fiori” we called “wheels," and orzo we called "rice"), cooled them and put them all mixed up in a bowl.  I told him that I didn’t expect him to eat it and that we were just going to play with it.  I gave Big Brother three empty bowls so he could sort the pasta shapes.  At first he didn’t want to touch the pasta with his hands, so he dumped it from one bowl to another.  I then put some of the cooked pasta into a Ziploc bag so he could feel it without having to actually touch it with his hands.  He had a lot of fun squishing the pasta in the bag.  He had spilled some pasta on his place mat and after a while I asked if he could help me clean up the mess and put the pasta back in the bowls (he loves to help).  He was quite enthusiastic about helping mommy with this task and I praised him for being such a good helper.  He played with the pasta for a few more minutes and said he was done, so we stopped.  Success again!

Notes
Each time we played with the pasta:

• We didn't play with it during mealtime.  I told him that we were just going to play with the pasta and that he didn't have to eat it.  Because it was a game and he knew I wasn’t trying to pressure him to eat it, he was more willing to participate.
• He had a wet washcloth on his place mat.  He is much more comfortable touching things if he knows that he can quickly wipe food off his hands.
• I tied his food therapy in with things that Big Brother is currently learning and likes to do.  As a result, he was more interested in participating.
• I kept my expectations in check and showed respect for him.  I didn’t pressure him to eat the pasta, made sure that he had the things he needed (a wet washcloth) to feel like he could safely participate, and didn’t push him to keep going after he said he was done.
• I offered lots of praise.  Everyone loves to receive encouraging words for a job well done!