When Texture Is Tricky: Tips for Helping Your Child Overcome Food Texture Sensitivities

Navigating the nuances of feeding your child can sometimes be tricky, but for some families, the transition to solid foods can be particularly challenging. Some children have difficulty progressing from formula or human milk to pureed solids (like baby food) and beyond. 

What Is Typical?

Feeding skill progression looks something like this:

• 0-6 Months

• Human milk and/or formula are the primary nutrition source 

• 5-7 Months

• Begins to take infant cereal and/or pureed baby foods by spoon

• Starts to show interest in the smell and look of food

• Uses hands to explore a variety of food and non-food textures and frequently mouths objects

• 6-9 Months

• Grabs, bangs, and sucks on spoons and teethers

• Begins to hold and attempt to eat teething crackers or similar solids

• 7-9 Months

• Begins self-feeding meltable solids

• Shows reactions to new smells and tastes

• 9-13 Months

• Finger feeding soft table foods for at least a portion of the meal 

• Enjoys a variety of smells and tastes

• 24-30 Months

• Tolerates eating a variety of food textures

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website has more information on developmental milestones.

Feeding Challenges and How to Solve Them

Some children begin to have feeding issues along the way. Common challenges are: 

• Gagging a lot when starting baby foods or new textures

• Pushing a lot of food out of the front of their mouth

• Having a hard time moving from smooth baby foods to chewing foods

Parents and caregivers can ease the transition to solids with a few strategies. Offering smaller bite sizes can be helpful when children have persistent gagging or spilling of food from their mouth. Your child may benefit from bites the size of the nail on your little finger, rather than full spoonfuls, when starting baby foods. 

The tongue is a really sensitive area, and some children need time to get used to bites placed on the middle of their tongue! Giving your child small bites into their cheek, rather than directly onto their tongue, can decrease gagging and improve acceptance. This can also be a helpful strategy to teach the tongue to move from side to side in the mouth, a skill needed for transitioning to chewing foods!

When starting pureed foods adding a little liquid (i.e. water, human milk, or formula) to the puree/baby food to make it a thinner, smoother consistency, may help make it the “just right” consistency. Once your child is accepting this thinner, smoother consistency well, you can slowly decrease the amount of added liquid.

While transitioning to table foods your child may benefit from using this same strategy for slowly increasing the lumpiness or grittiness of the puree, if they have been sensitive to texture changes in the past. 

Having a second spoon or teether handy allows your child to have the opportunity to explore their spoon and have some self-led tastes, while still allowing for adult-led bites. This also provides the opportunity to practice chewing skills.

Children can benefit from the opportunity to self-explore touching and tasting new foods on their plate or tray. This is sometimes called “messy play.”

Try to avoid using negative words to describe foods or your child’s response to them. Instead, use neutral descriptors to talk about the food (i.e. sweet, sour, savory, lumpy, gritty, etc.).

When to Reach Out for More Support

You should reach out to a feeding therapist if your child displays any of the following: 

• coughing or choking while eating or drinking, or you have any other safety concerns

• not making progress, despite trying some of the above strategies

• not eating or drinking enough to stay adequately fed or hydrated

• rapidly decreasing their variety of accepted foods