Many of our sensory seeking children self-regulate by chewing or sucking on non-food items. Chewing on their shirt sleeve or sucking on their fingers helps to organize, calm, soothe, and regulate their sensory systems. Providing a chewy necklace or bracelet is a great way to feed their sensory system, but there are also certain snacks that you can feed their bodies to help them regulate too! This blog gives ideas of some snacks to try that provide great sensory input for your sensory seeking child.
Crunchy snacks provide a lot of pressure input to the jaw. These snacks include:
- Nuts
- Thick or hard granola bars
- Apples, pears, carrot sticks, cucumbers
- Pretzels
- Crackers
- Ice chips
- Rice cakes
- Bagel or pita chips
- Graham crackers
- Dry cereal
Chewy snacks promote an increased rate of chewing as well as providing a lot of input. Some examples of these snacks are:
- Fruit snacks
- Fruit leather
- Dried fruit
- Raisins
- Chewy mini bagels
- Gum
- Sausage sticks or beef jerky
Sucking on snacks and drinks also provides great resistance in the mouth for sensory seekers. Try these ideas:
- Drinking liquids through a crazy straw or small coffee stirrer straw
- Drinking a smoothie or yogurt through a regular straw
- Sucking on apple sauce or yogurt squeeze pouches
- Sucking on hard mints
Next time you give your little sensory seeker a snack, try one of these to nourish both their bodies and sensory systems!
Blue Bird Day—the first therapeutic preschool and kindergarten program in the nation—fosters socialization, sensory regulation, and pre-academic learning in children ages 2-7 years. Our compassionate therapists practice a relationship-based and family-centered approach, provide parent training, and collaborate on goals and individualized intensive treatment plans for your child.
We believe in a collaborative and multi-disciplinary team approach to therapy. A team of occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, dietitians, developmental therapists, behavioral therapists, physical therapists, and therapeutic assistants are created for each child to ensure child and family are fully supported and the best possible results are achieved.
Options for individualized, group and virtual therapy sessions are available as well.
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