There are many non-verbal children with great difficulties with food... because of textures, colors, shapes, smells ... But why is food so important in language development?

Because many senses come into play in the eating process and these multisensory moments are complex 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 to eat crushed foods, and even have very restricted food interests and with really particular behaviors with this moment of the meal and all this together with the great struggles to long term that their parents have with small achievements with great daily stress situations that, many times, rightly despair them with this unsustainable situation.

I am convinced that many professionals who have worked with this type of difficulties, eating disorders, and behaviors already know about the subject, but in the method we have many families who have been asking for advice and resources about it.

Thus, throughout several entries in this blog, we will give you tools to take a path that is feasible and produces a change not only in your child but also at the family level.

But first of all, let's discuss the reason for this choice.

Why Language and Food?

Of course, it is very necessary to develop a good diet not only in nutritional aspects but for the future development of language.

Making the change of process to the solid accompanies the development and stimulation of all the phonoarticulatory muscles that will accompany us, in this much desired process of the development of “speech”.

It is necessary for our child to have good tone, for his muscles to be in shape and prepared so that the entire articulation assembly is put into motion and thus ready for language.

On the other hand, we have more behavioral aspects, of rigidity even with food and making an intervention in this very mundane aspect of daily life also makes us work on the communication aspects that intervene in these moments.

Foods are the first objects that children touch, super important in the oral phase and in this way, it is very important that they accept them, that they integrate them and see them as friends not as enemies because also, through them, we will know the world and we will communicate in that space, with our family, those first languages of what I like, what I don't like, colors, temperatures, big and small...  

As you can see, there is a lot of language and a lot of communication in this area and we can always take advantage of it when it is a moment that the children enjoy with us.

The children here see us, hear us and listen to us communicate, it is one of the few moments that our children remain still, and one of the moments in which we can most work on aspects of language and communication, by example, sharing that space surrounded for a table.

In this entry, we will see how to directly attack the behavior and how we can help our children live this moment in a healthy, serene way, as parents responsible for a natural and evolutionary diet.

What are our needs?

Before delving deeper into the topic, the first thing we have to be clear about on the subject of Food and Language is where we have to focus our attention based on the needs of our child.

In other words, we have to know what the needs of the specific case are in order to assess the priorities at the level of strategies and what we can do in our family unit. In short, what is the challenge that we have to face to determine actions and strategies.

However, in this blog we are going to discuss 2 main objectives that we work on in intervention and what are the most common that we find in our field.

1. The first objective is the transition to solid food , the fact that he tolerates textures, beyond soups, purees, liquids...
2. He The second objective is to expand the repertoire of foods and adjust the timing of meals. Many times we find children who eat 3,4,5 foods, and it really takes us a lot of effort to introduce new foods into their daily diet.

We will try to give you resources to make this process familiar, fun and effective.

Also lastly, we would include everything related to teaching them to eat well , use cutlery correctly, not handle liquids, not take food in and out of their mouths carelessly... We will not go into this last point either because The intervention is more oriented to aspects of social and educational behaviors.

We will tell you more aspects in the following posts.