She is 18 months old and everything I feed her she basically just swallows. She is even getting her molars in now. Sometimes she makes a gulp noise like it is hard to get down. It is not that she is thirsty because she is using her sippy. So I dice everything really small. I sit with her and say chew chew chew, moving my mouth in the chewing motion. I even eat the same thing next to her showing her how mommy does it. She does it sometimes and just when I think that I can let her feed herself normal size pieces of food she starts choking. Any advice?
It's important to remind kids at this age to chew their food and swallow it before shoving more into their mouths. Sometimes I still feel like it's a contest with my 2 1/2 year old son to see how much he can stuff in his mouth at once. Best remedy I think is to give her only one piece of food at a time. Remind her to take bites, chew each bite, swallow each bite, before she takes another. She'll get it eventually.
She could need Ocupational Therapy for swallowing issues. My niece did, but her trouble started earlier, when she was an infant. She is doing great now.
talk to your ped and ask for an order for OT
Just letting you know that you're not alone. My 26-month-old STILL does this. I think they're just used to baby food, milk, etc, and it's easier to swallow without chewing. I'm just giving it time, and trying to be patient!
You might want to call Early Intervention to have your child evaluated- eating issues such as the type you are describing can be helped with speech therapy. EI will evalaute your child for free. My 19 month old son goes to speech and physical therapy. He was a late walker- and late talker...It has been wonderful!
Hi J., this is a pretty delayed reply but wanted to put in my 2 cents. If you have good insurance I would skip Early Intervention. My son was evaluated thru EI and the therapy was actually more expensive than my insurance. (But the evaluation is free and probably worth while). I agree with the posts that an evaluation by someone is probably warranted. My son did not swallow the food like your daughter but he could not chew, gagged and would either spit out or vomit the food out. This was due to poor lateral muscles in his tongue. Food would get stuck on his tongue and trigger his gag reflex. We worked with therapists at Children's Memorial. They had us use a nuk brush to "tickle" the sides of his cheeks for force him to move his tongue to the side and build the muscles. They had us do some other exercises too. Unfortunately, my son developed what has been diagnosed as "food aversion/oral defensiveness" as a result. He will only eat a VERY limited number of "safe" foods. We are now working with a therapist to help with this issue. The technique is called "Food Chaining" and a doctor in DuPage (Fishbein) helped develop this technique (he also co-wrote a book with the same title). It seems to be working for us. It is all very precarious. I only tell you all this so you can know what can happen when kids have difficulty with physically eating at the early an age. One final word, be careful how you respond when your daughter chokes. You don't want to get too excited or make her more scared (not easy to do) as this can lead to a fear of eating. If you have any questions feel free to email me. Good luck to you and I hope your daughter is able to eat better soon!
My son is EXACTLY the same! Yesterday we were at Yorktown Mall. We got Kenny a hot dog and I cut it up into small pieces. Anyway (may get a little gross here),my husband gave him a piece of cookie it did not realize that is was a little to big for him. Well he did not chew it very well and he started choking and eventually threw everything up! That is when (here comes the gross part!)I noticed that he did not chew ANY of the hot dog pieces! NOT ANY ONE OF THE ONES I SAW!!! He has all of his teeth, and I tell him to chew, chew, chew. I show him and he imitates me all the time! I want him to be independent in his feeding (he is 20 mos old), but when he starts shoveling the food in, I have to take it from him!
So, J., you are not the only one experiencing this!
Good Luck to you!
P.S. I wanted to say that we did not just sit there and watch my son choke! The way I put it above sounds like we sat there and did nothing! I needed to clear that up!!
My daughter used to do the same thing. I have had her evaluated with Early Intervention for several things and then found out this was a problem. Please do not think I am saying that it is for you!!!! Anyhow, one of the things we have to do is show her how to chew and with every single bite sometimes. It is gross when we are eating out since I will have to chew with my mouth open and make some noises sometimes to help her do it but it does reinforce it. Her OT is starting to finally address this issue... she is also a stuffer so that does not help either!
Awesome that you are giving her her sippy at meals. Remind her to sip between each bite too so you can peek in there to make sure there is no food left... it definately helps us. I use a straw for our daughter so she opens wide as she tries to get it in her mouth and I get to see better and then remind her if she needs to chew!
Good luck and blessing to you!
You may want to talk to a speech pathologist about feeding issues. They have all sorts of tricks to use. My daughter had an issue at 6mos with drinking. One visit with the speech pathologist and she was fine.
Hang in there mommy. She'll learn before you know it. Her teeth and gums may be sore and that's why she doesn't chew. If she chews sometimes, she knows how to; just let her and if she chokes, be with her and go over it and over it again. Repetition is what teaches. Keep it up. You'll both be o.k. Remember to cut the things big enought to chew...too small could make her swallow automatically.
