Some foods literally melt in your mouth. They can start crunchy, frozen or soft, but without much chewing our tongue can mush them together so they can be swallowed.
Meltable foods are a great introduction to chewing. They encourage the mouth to move, but since they break down without much chewing (with help from enzymes in our saliva and the warmth of our mouth), we can swallow them with minimal chewing, often with a little mushing of our tongue on our palate.
Meltable foods don’t start as mush. They all start with different sensory characteristics that picky eaters may like or not. Some children like the crunchiness of meltable crackers and some children find the crunch to be too loud and the crumbs too messy. Some children love the melting coolness of a pudding or smoothie pop and others find the cold too sharp and jarring.
The trick is to find the comfort level of a picky eater, help them enjoy each food where they are comfortable, then help them become comfortable with it in a new way. A child might not be ready to bite a cracker, but can ‘bite’ it with his fingers and crumble it on his tray. Another child may not be ready to lick a popsicle or feel it with their lips to put it on like chapstick, but they get excited to paint with it.
Meltables are so much fun to explore and discover with a picky eater. Comment on the activities this week. Let us know what you tried, what worked and what didn’t. You can also e-mail me with any questions or suggestions for foods to play with in future posts. I hope you and your picky eater enjoy this week’s activity’s!
Happy food play!