There are many non-verbal children with great difficulties with food… due to textures, colors, shapes, smells… But, Why is it so important in language development?
Because in the food process many come into play senses and these multisensory moments are complexes for our little ones with communication and language difficulties.
On this path towards language I have realized that many children at very advanced ages continue taking pureed foods, and even have very restricted food interests and with really particular behaviors with this moment of eating and all of this combined with the great long-term struggles that their parents have with small achievements with major daily stress situations that often make them rightly desperate with this unsustainable situation.
I am convinced that many professionals who have worked with this type of difficulties, eating disorders, behaviors already know about the subject but In the method we have many families who have been asking for advice and resources on this.
So, throughout several entries in this blog, we will give you tools to make a path that is feasible and produces a change not only in your child but also at the family level.
But first, let's discuss the reasons for this choice.
Why Language and Food?
Of course, it is very necessary to develop a good diet not only in nutritional aspects but also for the future development of language.
Making the process change to solid state accompanies the development and stimulation of all the phonoarticulatory muscles that will accompany us in this much-desired process of developing “speech.”
It's essential for our child to have good tone, for their muscles to be fit and prepared so that the entire articulation system can be activated and thus be ready for language development.
On the other hand, we have more behavioral aspects, even rigidity with food and intervening in this everyday aspect of life also involves working on the communication aspects that come into play at these times.
Food is the first object that children touch, super important in the oral phase and in this way, it is very importantIt is important that they accept them, integrate them and see them as friends. Not as enemies because also, through them, we will get to know the world and communicate in that space, with our family, those first languages of what I like, what I don't like, of colors, temperatures, the big and the small...
As you can see, There is a lot of language and communication in this area and we can always take advantage of it whenever it is a moment that the children enjoy with us.
The children here see us, hear us, and listen to us communicate. It's one of the few moments when our children sit still, and one of the moments when we can work the most on language and communication skills, by example, sharing that space surrounded by a table.
In this post, we will see how to attack directly behavior and how we can help our children live this moment in a healthy, serene way, as responsible parents of a natural and evolutionary diet.
What are our needs?
Before delving deeper into the topic, the first thing we need to be clear about regarding Nutrition and Language is where we need to focus our attention based on our child's needs.
In other words, we need to know the needs of each specific case in order to assess strategic priorities and what we can do within our family unit. In short, we need to understand the challenges we face in order to determine the actions and strategies.
However, in this blog we are going to deal with 2 main objectives that we work in intervention and what are the most common ones that we find in our field.
- The first objective is the transition to solid food, the fact that he is tolerating textures beyond soups, purees, liquids...
- The second objective is expand the food repertoire and adjust mealtimes. We often find children who eat 3, 4, or 5 foods, and it really takes a lot of effort to introduce new foods into their daily diet.
We'll try to give you resources to make this process familiar, fun, and effective.
Also finally, everything related to the fact of teach them to eat well, using cutlery correctly, not handling liquids, not taking food in and out of their mouths carelessly... We won't go into this last point either because the intervention is more oriented towards aspects of social and educational behavior.
We will tell you more about this in the following posts.