5 Sensory Strategies to Explore Food
For children with sensory feeding difficulties or limited diets, mealtime can be a challenging experience. Whether it’s the texture, smell, or taste, that triggers discomfort, many kids can struggle to engage with food in ways that promote healthy eating habits and a balanced diet.
What if we could help your kiddo reconnect with food through their senses in a gentle, non-pressuring way?
We can model sensory strategies that focus on exploring food through description, touch, taste, sound, and smell, to encourage positive, playful interactions with food.
Here are five sensory strategies that create a more fun and less intimidating mealtime experience for your child:
- Describing Food
A first step into introducing new food is to build language around it. Describing food through words can help children overcome feelings of uncertainty or fear. You can describe the temperature, texture (bumpy, smooth), shape, color, smell, taste, or what it looks like. Use words that focus on sensory details to help your child explore food with their imagination. For example: “This apple is so shiny and smooth.” or “Look at the green broccoli! It looks like tiny trees! “This helps children develop a vocabulary around food and can begin to normalize food experiences by making them less about the taste and more about the exploration. It may even be helpful to start introducing a new food by placing it on the table or on a separate plate and just tolerate looking at it and describing it from a distance.
2. Touch
For children who are tactile defensive or have difficulty eating different textures of food, starting with touch, without pressure to eat it, can be a useful strategy. Begin with non-threatening foods that are safe to touch and explore, such as soft fruit, dried beans, or even dough or non-foods such as, playdough or pom poms. Model and encourage your child to smoosh, squeeze, or roll the food in their fingers, back and palm of the hands, face, or lips. This hands-on experience helps desensitize them to different textures in a playful, non-pressuring way. As they become more comfortable, you may even model touching the food to your lips to give it a kiss. For example, “I’m just giving it a little kiss to see how it feels on my lips!” Kissing a food item (lightly pressing the lips to it) allows them to engage with the food without committing to putting it in their mouth fully. When they are comfortable with touching the food, they may become more open to bringing it closer to their oral cavity by smelling, licking, or tasting.
3. Smell
Smell is a strong sense that is linked to appetite and our eating experience. Before diving into tasting, encourage your child to smell different foods. Use a variety of foods, such as herbs, fruit, or baked goods. Ask them questions like: “Does this smell sweet, or does it smell sour?” or “Can you smell the cinnamon?” The goal is not to force the child to taste the food but to help them become familiar with the idea that food can have different and pleasant aromas. This builds curiosity about how food can look, feel, and smell before taking that final step to taste.
4. Auditory
Some children may be more comfortable with foods that have sounds associated with them, like crunching, crackling, or even slurping. Encourage your child to listen for the sound of a food item when bitten into or chewed. You can introduce crunchy foods (like carrot sticks, crackers, or chips) and ask: “What does it sound like when you bite into this?” or “Do you hear that? It’s like a crunchy noise!” For some children, food-related sounds can even become a motivator for them to try new foods/
5. Taste
Sometimes, the fear of trying new foods stems from the overwhelming sensation of a full mouth. Encouraging your child to lick the food can be a gentle way to introduce them to new tastes without overwhelming them. You can make it playful by saying things like: “Could we give it a little lick and see how it feels.” or “Licking it helps us get a taste without having to eat it yet.” This technique can be helpful for children with sensory issues who struggle with the texture of certain foods. Licking gives them the ability to explore the food’s flavor without committing to a full bite and consuming it.
Helping children with sensory feeding difficulties to build a positive and comfortable relationship with food is a process that requires creativity and patience. By using sensory strategies like describing, touching, smooshing, kissing, smelling, and licking, you can help children move past the barriers of new and non-preferred foods. Over time, these small, playful steps can lead to bigger strides in expanding their diets.
Check out this sight for more food play ideas: https://www.feedingplus.com/blog/food-play-ideas-for-picky-eaters
Are you concerned about your child’s feeding habits? Kids Place Feeding Therapy may be able to help. Contact us today to schedule an evaluation!
