Has your baby or toddler ever filled her mouth with blueberries - one after the next - without chewing and swallowing? Perhaps she stores them in her cheeks or at the roof of her mouth and you find food a few hours later!
Is this normal?
Is it behavioural?
Is this a sensory processing issue?
This question comes up almost daily in my practice as an Occupational Therapist In short, food pocketing and stuffing can happen when children are eating too fast and haven't mastered chewing skills, but if pocketing becomes a persistent issue despite using the preventive measures listed in this post, it may be time to seek professional help. To understand why your child may pocket or overfill their mouth, let’s briefly discuss oral development. Starting at birth, we want your baby to learn to soothe herself by placing her own hands into her mouth. By doing this, she learns the landscape of her mouth. This type of self-soothing with hands is comforting to babies and is exactly what we want them to do! Your baby eventually learns how to bring toys further into her mouth and learns to gum and teethe on these safe teething toys. This is a developmental milestone that should be encouraged. She first learns where her mouth is, and then she learns about the boundaries within her mouth, such as the tongue, the hard palate and the back of her mouth. Your baby will also learn to open and close her mouth around toys and her hands, and she soon learns that placing a toy straight back in her mouth may cause her to gag. She also learns when her mouth is too small for a large toy. In the OT world, we call this mouthing and the development of oral play skills. This is exactly what we want to see babies doing before 6 months of age.
Your child's mouth is already overstuffed with food - now what?
1. Encourage your child to chew, but if she won't ask her to spit out the food, take a sip of water, and start over.
2. Offer her a small bite as her next bite and use the strategies listed above.
If you regularly find food stored in your child's mouth minutes to hours after a meal, it may be time to seek professional help. While it can be behavioural, food stuffing may also be a red flag that your child is not chewing her food and may not be feeling the food within her mouth. A lack of oral sensation can lead to stuffing because excess food helps your child understand the boundaries of her mouth better. She may seek out crunchy or chewy textures or may crave highly flavoured foods (spicy, sour) to "wake up" the oral sensations within her mouth. This behaviour is concerning to feeding professionals and may require therapy.
Speak with your paediatrician and seek professional help for your child if this is a persistent problem.
I would recommend scheduling an assessment with a Feeding Specialist (either an Occupational Therapist {OT} or a Speech Language Pathologist {SLP}) who has specialized training in oral/mouth development. If your child is regularly pocketing food, please always do a mouth check before she leaves the table, as this can be a safety and choking concern.