An interview
with co-authors
of the newly released book “Sense-
ational
Mealtimes” Denise Stapleton, PhD,
Accredited Practicing Dietitian & Gillian Griffiths, Occupational Therapist.**
Mealtime
problems can be a common toddler trait. However, they might be more common in children
with FPIES due to negative, even traumatic, past experiences with food. It makes us wonder: how do you
know when it’s more than just a fussy phase and is it going to get worse
if you don’t do something about it?
What
causes mealtime difficulties?
There is a
long list of things that can trigger eating to be tricky. For example; premature or complicated birth,
early hospitalization, medical or developmental conditions, pain, trauma,
excessive stress, reflux, vomiting, ear, throat or chest infections, allergies,
intolerance's, and constipation are some of the conditions that can contribute
to complex mealtimes. FPIES can interrupt and delay the process of introducing
solids to an infant and can complicate a toddler’s progress with textures. Post-natal
depression, anxiety and stress can also make mealtimes tricky for some
families.
What can
we do about mealtime difficulties?
After
attending to medical needs, one of the key areas to explore in order to create
enjoyable mealtimes is your own and your child’s sensory preferences. Our sensory preferences influence what we notice, tolerate, seek, avoid and
are distracted or distressed by. Understanding
preferred sensory properties of food and mealtimes might be a key.
What are
sensory preferences?
Sensory
preferences are the sights, sounds, and types of touch, smells, tastes,
temperatures, textures and types of movement we prefer in our day.
Sensory
preferences are unique to each individual as they are based on: sensory
thresholds in the brain; genetics; the surrounding environment;
feelings; interactions and experiences during each day and across a lifetime
(ie memories). On top of this, pain, stress, trauma, fatigue, reflux, vomiting,
infections, allergies, intolerance's and constipation may make a parent or a
child more or less sensitive.
Discovering
sensory preferences takes time as we may have a different threshold for each
sense and the amount of sensory information we avoid, tolerate or seek more of
can change during the day. At times, parents can also project their
own sensory preferences onto to their children.
How do
sensory preferences affect mealtime behavior?
During
mealtimes we use EVERY sense to help us notice, interact, socialize; and
to eat, to use utensils and to be seated (or not). We
continually use our senses to gather sensory information from our surroundings
and our body in order to ensure our mealtimes are emotionally safe, successful
and enjoyable.
Our sensory
preferences directly influence our thoughts, feelings, memories, interactions
with others and our behavior. If our brain detects or remembers an
experience that feels unsafe, worrisome or dangerous, our body might experience
a Danger Center Response (fight, flight, freeze or fright). These
strong feelings might be associated with the sensory properties of certain
foods, the surroundings or interactions and can have a very large impact on
mealtime behavior.
Exercise:
Can you remember eating a food that caused you to feel unwell or vomit?
Can you tolerate the smell, sight, taste or texture of that food now? How
does it make you feel? What would you do if you were forced to eat even
just a little bit? How would you behave?
What we and our children experience can affect our thoughts and
how we feel, and these
can affect our behavior. Similarly, our behavior affects how we feel and
our feelings can make us more or less sensitive to
certain stimuli. As we explore in the book, it is so helpful for parents
to always tune in and wonder what might have caused a child’s behavior. Ask yourself, how were they feeling, how were you
feeling, what might have affected those feelings? This
wondering can help us identify and do something about the potential
triggers to alleviate or prevent the undesirable
behavior.
How can
I help my child feel safe at snack and mealtimes?
You can
support your child’s ability to stay calm by taking time to "SENSE-itively" tune in to his or her cues. When you tune in to your child’s
sensory preferences, you can create a ‘just right’ experience that will
feel emotionally safe for everyone and hopefully bring pleasure. Ongoing
pleasurable mealtimes can positively shape a child’s mealtime behavior
and the types or range of food he will eat.
The authors
acknowledge typical strategies may not have been successful for many families
with ongoing mealtime difficulties. The book reinforces:
- That each child is incredibly unique,
- Parents are the experts in relation to
their child; and
- With the new understandings that the book
brings, parents are enabled to develop
unique ‘just right’ strategies for their child, with the help of a
supportive clinician if needed.
The authors are at
the forefront of applying all the evidence in sensory processing across a lifetime. This enhances our understandings of
mealtime difficulties. SENSE-ational Mealtimes is the first
to enhance caregivers’ capacity for reflective
functioning through the understandings about sensory preferences. The following
article provides preliminary research results that strongly support the need
for further research in this area. Families found
the understandings in the book are a crucial
missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle about mealtime difficulties: “Development and evaluation of SENSE-ational
Mealtimes: a book for families with mealtime difficulties” (2013) by Denise
Stapleton, Gillian Griffiths and Jill Sherriff. International Journal of Health
Promotion and Education.
If your child is displaying sensory preferences and needs
help, discuss this with your child’s Pediatrician, Dietitian or
Therapists. This article highlights one
resource for navigating feeding issues related to sensory preferences. If you are looking to learn even more, here are some
additional resources:
- Living Sensationally (2008) by Winnie Dunn (occupational
therapist) which explains what it means to have sensation everywhere given
that people are sensory beings and the
world is a sensory place
- Just Take a Bite by Lori
Ernsberger & Tania Stegen-Hanson
- Feeding Challenges in
Young Children: Strategies and Specialized Interventions for
Success Paperback by Deborah
Bruns Ph.D., Stacy
Thompson Ph.D.
- Baby Sense (2007) by Megan Faure (occupational therapist) and Ann
Richardson (nurse and midwife) helps parents understand their infant’s
sensory experiences.
**Denise Stapleton is an Accredited Practicing Dietitian with many years
experience in Pediatric nutrition and research.
She passionately supports families with varying mealtime difficulties and
therapeutic dietary needs as a private practitioner, senior community
Dietitian, researcher, author and mentor. Gillian Griffiths an
Occupational Therapist with extensive training in Sensory Processing and is
co-director of Engaging Your Senses, providers of professional development.
Denise and Gillian recently published the go-to parent guide book SENSE-ationalMealtimes and Facebook page.
I can't order pizza because I had a long day at work or rely on
a frozen lasagna because I didn't have time to go grocery shopping. FPIES is our life, at least for the
foreseeable future. We embrace it, we manage it. We put on a happy face and
positive attitude and thank God every day for two healthy boys and the progress
Chase continues to make. But at the end
of the day it is exhausting both mentally and physically and there is no room
for error. 
