WHY YOUR AUTISTIC CHILD DOESN’T CHEW HIS OR HER FOOD

There is a very good reason why some children with autism don’t chew their food. And that reason has nothing to do with them being toothless at all or being sore in the mouth, or that their food is rock-hard — making it impossible to chew. To get to the bottom of why this is happening, you first need to know or understand the side of the Autism fence your child is on.

When it comes to autism, there are a lot of factors you need to know and consider — such as what TYPE of autism your child suffers from because there are quite a few — is their autism MILD, MODERATE, OR SEVERE? And lastly, are they on the Hyper or Hypo side of that autism fence, or both if you’re unlucky like me? Once that is established, you begin to know all that you need to know about your autistic child. I will cover all of these in my following articles in full detail. But for now, I will talk about what I’ve come to call the “autism fence” which is the reason why your autistic child doesn’t chew their food.

Let’s start with the hyper side of this. When we say an autistic individual is hyper, this means that the child or individual is ultra-sensitive to a lot of things if not everything. And this hypersensitivity is real and sometimes even painful to them, and it causes sensations that these individuals just can’t deal with or ignore because sometimes they can even hear their sounds. Yep, I am going to say it again. Everything has sound, even food, and I’ve seen my autistic son placing his big ear on the food like the food was talking to him and he could hear what it was saying. He also doesn’t chew his food, by the way, in case I forgot to mention it.

Now, the brain of an individual suffering from autism functions and operates way too different from yours and mine. An autistic brain can immediately become sensitive to — let’s say the sound of the TV before even turning the TV on. I can see you popping your eyes out, but it’s true, and to an extent, our brains do it too. Here’s an example: have you ever worn a shoe that pinches you so much that when you take it off your feet thank you and see you as their savior?

The next time you attempt to wear those shoes again even if it’s a few months later since you’ve last worn them, the minute your eyes rest on them, there’s an alarm that goes ballistic in your brain and when that happens, you feel an instant sensitivity coupled with fear, pain, trauma, and anxiety in your feet. So instant that your feet will suddenly get swollen and expand to a point that if you so much as shove them in those shoes, pandemonium can break loose. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go ahead and try it out yourself, but you’ll never want anything to do with those shoes again, even if they’re your designer expensive, and favorite shoes. Sensitivity is like that of an individual who is on the hyper-spectrum. They are sensitive to everything — from touches to tastes to smells to sounds. I’m talking about the whole shebang. These individuals are sensory defensive.

The hypo side, however, is the opposite of the former. Individuals who are hypo-sensitive are irresponsive to all the above-mentioned. No smell in the world can be effective to these individuals, not even the fresh, strongest smell of poop. Even the mother of sounds cannot penetrate a hypo-autistic brain. It’s like they are immune to these. Their brains are indestructible to these senses, and it doesn’t matter which one it is. Their brains are sensory impregnatable.

And then there are those extra — especially autism cases where a single individual plays for both fields, sometimes for the hyper team, and the hypo team in other cases. My son is one such special case. And it took me almost forever to know what I know today, and I don’t want another parent to go through this alone and unknowingly as I did because the process can become so cumbersome.

Now that we understand how these two fences differ, let’s go back to look at why would a child not want to chew his or her food. When your child doesn’t chew their food is because they are hyper-sensitive in the mouth, and the movement that our food makes when we chew creates this unbearable pain and discomfort that the child ends up not knowing what to do — especially if the individual in question happens to be non-verbal, as this is very common in autism.

Such individuals would then somehow learn of a way to manipulate their food (eating it without chewing). This is what they do, (or in my case what my son does): they catch the food with their mouth at an angle that when the food enters the mouth, it slides down to the throat without making any stray or unnecessary movements and without them choking on it. This is a technique my 11-year-old son does. I call it the mouth-meeting spoon technique because what he does is — position or jerk his head in a very unique way that makes the food drop in his mouth and then slides down.

Now that you know the why, let me tell you what you should do to help the situation: when I cook my son’s food, I make sure that I mash it and that there is either a pumpkin, or sweet potatoes, even potatoes themselves, or anything that can form a paste-like substance. I take those and mix them with the shredded meat or chicken and add a lot of gravy or sauce and add pap. And this makes the sliding very smooth.

Another thing to know about a child like that is that they are very picky eaters, they can only eat what they can manipulate, anything else that they can’t, they won’t eat. Even if means eating the same kind of food forever, they can do that. My son once ate only two kinds of foods all day every day for three years because that was the only food he could manipulate at the time, and it took me a year to introduce him to something else. In the morning, he ate Weet-bix and milk and for lunch and dinner, he ate pap and milk only.

So, make sure you stock up on the food they can eat, especially those of nutritional value. Well, and of course, a little bit of those have no nutritional value because while you’re in the process of introducing them to other foods — you find that they only eat those. Now, while you’re busy mastering the trick of introducing other foods, you let them eat whatever they can for as long as that process takes you. I once met a child who only ate ice cream, yogurt, and ultra-mel custard. Why these though? Because with these foods, there’s no biting or demanded. Just an opened mouth ready to slide the food in.

The trick to passing this dragging process is patience and understanding. Another thing to note is this: autistic children who are picky eaters struggle to learn to feed themselves or eat anything by themselves except when it’s the food they can manipulate on their own without assistance. My son also loves his ice cream, cake with a lot of creams (he uses the cream to manipulate the cake, and he doesn’t eat a dry cake with no cream), yogurt, and chocolate.

I wanted to share a video of my son but I am having difficulties uploading it where I was forcing him to eat a paste of macaroni, mince, and pumpkin. And for some reason, he struggled to feed himself because even though he can manipulate this dish, he can’t do the head thing I told you about earlier [see paragraph 9] and steadily hold the spoon at the same time because of a lack of motor skills — something I will cover on another article. So, he refused to eat until I finally had mercy on him.