Table manners require good fine motor coordination and control. It helps to have well-developed dominance so that you can grasp the knife easily in your right hand in order to cut food using both an accurate and strong cutting motion. Managing to scoop food up into your spoon and not spilling it before it reaches your mouth also requires good motor control. You only have to watch people eating peas with a fork to get a good idea of who has mastered their fine motor skills!
You also need to be able to accurately gauge just how much food you have in your mouth. If you get this wrong, you could over-fill your mouth! We often see children doing this, it is as if they just can’t sense that their mouth is full.
Synchronising the movements of biting, chewing and swallowing also requires accurate timing and sequencing. So often we see children chewing with their mouths wide open as they try to manage the food in their mouths and to breathe at the same time. They often are not able to accurately feel where the food is, and cannot easily manage to move the food about using their tongues.
Children who have poor tactile awareness and sensation, might not be aware of having messed food on their lips and cheeks. Their efforts to lick their lips to clean them could prove ineffective as they don’t know where or how to lick in order to remove the food.
Children who have sensory challenges need to have attention drawn to these difficulties in a gentle and caring manner which assists them in getting it right, rather than simply having it pointed out that they are messy, bad-mannered eaters. Pointing out their difficulty in the presence of others will only serve to shame them. Be a little more tolerant of awkward table manners in your sensory children. They just need a little more time to master these skills!
Involving children in a variety of fun oral-motor activities which enhance sensory integration can assist the child in improving their oral motor awareness and integration as well as improving their general integration of sensory input.
