Hallie Bulkin argues that feeding difficulties labeled as sensory refusal often stem from motor or physiological problems instead. Watch for signs like mouth breathing, low tongue posture, and jaw-dominant chewing that suggest the child's body struggles with eating mechanics. Sensory exposure techniques alone won't work without addressing the underlying motor or airway issues.
We see texture selectivity. And naturally, someone might start working on sensory exposure, maybe food play, food chaining, gradually introducing textures, taking the pressure off eating. And there can absolutely be a place for all of that. But let's pull back a little bit because this child's sitting at the table with their feet dangling, they're chronically congested, they're habitually mouth breathing, the tongue is sitting low and forward, right? And when they chew, the jaw's doing most of the work with very limited tongue movement or lateralization. Now the case starts to look a little different, doesn't it? Right? And we have to ask like, okay, is there a sensory component? There may be, but what if what we're calling sensory refusal is actually a child communicating like, hey, this is really hard for my body to do? Yeah, that's totally different, right? And if I spend 4 months in therapy trying to get that child more comfortable touching and tasting a texture without understanding why managing that texture is difficult, I may be doing really good work at the wrong layer of the problem. Why am I talking about this? So come hang out with us. Go to feedthepeeds.com/training and register for Screen the Peeds to Feed the Peeds. Like I said, it's free. We're doing it together for 3 days, and I want you there.
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