28. How Posture at Mealtime Affects Picky Eating
Have you ever thought about how important posture could be in regards to your child’s eating habits? Children with autism are more likely to have low muscle tone making it all the more difficult to have a comfortable seat at the table.
A secure seating position is so important for both core and head support and can be a really important factor to ensure your child is able to eat new foods with harder and different textures!
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IN THIS EPISODE
How poor posture could be affecting your child’s eating experience
Learn about the 90-90-90 rule for a comfortable seating posture
Products that may be helpful to make your child’s meal time more comfortable
LINKS
Get on the waitlist for my upcoming online course: Overcoming Picky Eating with Autism
Join the Autism Nutrition Library
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast where you take a deep dive into the research on autism and dietary changes, nutrition supplements, and lifestyle modifications. Every week, we break down nutrition topics and an easy-to-understand way for you to feel less overwhelmed and feel confident on your nutrition journey with autism.
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast! I'm so excited you're here today. We are talking about a really interesting topic. About posture and how it affects picky, eating. A lot of people don't realize how important of a topic this is, and it often goes undiscussed, which I think is a huge mistake in the feeding world.
Now I want you to think of your child at mealtime. What is their posture? Are they even sitting down? Are they running across the room? If they are sitting down what do they look like? Are they sitting on the sofa? Are they sitting in their little chair? Are they sitting where their feet are dangling? What do they look like? So maybe even take a photo of your child if you haven't thought about this before and listen back to this episode and see how it compares to some of the recommendations here.
Now I will preface what I'm saying, the masters of the area with eating are definitely occupational therapist and posture. They have so much to bring to the table so I would recommend you listen to this episode and then bring what you've learned to your occupational therapist and see how you can apply this to your child and how they can help your child individually in the therapy that they're providing.
The first thing that I want to bring up is your child's or your nervous system. Your nervous system can be in one of two arenas. It can be in the flight or fight, or it can be at rest and digest stage. What we want while we're eating is of course the rest and digest stage. So when we're running around the room, we're not taking a break to eat, our nervous system is in this flight or fight mode.
It can also be in this flight or fight mode when a child is really anxious around food. They're not ready to try new things yet. They're being forced to try something new. It can put their nervous system into flight or fight. And so it's really important to think about the nervous system when we're working on picky eating approaches to make sure that the child is in a rested state their body is going to be able to digest. It's best because we know digestion is already an issue for kids on the autism spectrum, so having the time to slow down, to breathe well, to chew your food well all sets your digestion up for the most success.
Interestingly enough, their posture at mealtime is incredibly important and can affect their picky eating too. A secure seating position is so important for both core and head support and can be a really important factor in helping your child try new foods at mealtime.
Your child's number one priority is to keep their head up in space to be able to breathe. Their number one priority- their body's number one priority is not to eat. So if they're at mealtime and they're not able to support themselves, they feel like they're floppy. And they're not able to have great core support. They're probably not going to want to eat because their body's main focus is that stability, and that stability also allows for better hand-to-mouth coordination and fine motor manipulation of that food.
So for kids who have a hard time with that fine motor control, it's also incredibly important for them to have great posture. The stability can also allow for a full range of motion in the jaw for chewing. So if a child is slumped over, if they're not sitting at a great posture, which I'm going to tell you about in just a second. It can really affect how well they're able to chew their food. We know that many kids on the autism spectrum also have low muscle tone, also known as hypotonia. And hypotonia can affect your ability to chew foods like meats or things that are really difficult to chew. So if you're already having low muscle tone and you're not in a good posture, well you're just not setting yourself up for success in order to be able to eat new foods with harder and different textures.
The posture that is ideal at mealtime is the 90-90-90 position. And this is where a child has a 90-degree angle at their hips, at their knees, and at their ankles. The 90-90-90, when we have this kind of support, we have a lot of core muscle support. It helps make sure your child is in the best position, has the best posture, prevents choking even if they're sitting at a good angle, but just gives some great core support so that they can support themselves at mealtime. I highly encourage you to think about how you were sitting right now. What are the angle of your hips your knees and your ankles? Replicate this and set your feet flat on the ground and set straight up and you can tell just how supported you feel.
Now you're an adult. You have a great muscle tone. You have core support. A child who is young, who may have low muscle tone may not have developed those muscles yet. They're not able to hold themselves up as well as you. So think of you sitting at a bar, and you're sitting on a barstool and it doesn't have any kind of feet support. So your feet are just dangling there in space. And all you have to do is just keep your body upright. Well, if you're sitting there for an hour, it feels pretty uncomfortable and you already have those developed muscles.
So think of a child who does not have that kind of developed muscles. And we're expecting them to sit in a seat that's too big for them where they don't have any kind of foot support or core support while they are just not being set up to be successful at mealtime.
If you are looking for some kind of seat to support your child in their posture, and as they grow I love the Stokey trip trap. I am in no way affiliated with them. I am not sponsored by them, but this is the chair that I've seen so many kids be successful with. You can adjust the seat, the footrest to grow with them, and make sure that they maintain that 90-90-90 position as they grow. Now I know that these chairs can be expensive. I would recommend looking at them on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist. I have had a client recently find a steal of one that somebody grew out of on Facebook marketplace. So that's a great idea that they do have them on Amazon as well. But if you aren't able to use this kind of chair, here are some other tips that you might be able to use.
There are some other great chairs out there. This one is just my favorite, but if you are going to continue using the chair that you already have, you might consider adding a footrest. This could be something really cheap, like putting down a $2 stepstool that you found at target or home goods. You could stack some phone books and tape them together, something to allow your child to set their feet on.
If you notice that they are too small for the seat they're sitting in. So let's say they're sitting at a regular dining room table. You could put down a little no-skid mat, even like a shelf liner would work, where the child will not slide back and forth where they'll stay at the front of that chair.
You may even consider putting something behind them, like a cushion or a pillow, to keep them forward on that seat so that they can maintain that 90-90-90 position. You really want the tray and the table surface to fall between the child's belly button and their breast level. And you want them to be forward enough that their knees are over the edge of the seat of the chair. And if they're not, like I said you want to add back support we want to make sure that their knees are over the chair so that their feet can sit down on that 90-degree angle you can use side supports if you need to keep them in their seat. There's something called a high chair helper that can help with this and you can search this on amazon.
Now, I know that a lot of people have a hard time with keeping their kids at the table. Actually getting them to sit down, having these kinds of supports in place can actually help with keeping kids at the table because they feel a lot more comfortable. But if you notice that your child needs a little bit more support in order to stay at the table, you may consider a visual timer like a time timer.
I really liked that brand. You can also integrate this into other therapies and work on building up minute by minute, even starting with as little as 10 seconds. So build in positive reinforcement to help them stay at the table and star charts token boards things like that can be really helpful to motivate them to stay.
This may take time if your child doesn't regularly at the table. So be patient, work with therapists to aid you in this, and I believe that your child will see success and improvement with these small changes at mealtime.
If you found this valuable and you want to dive deeper with me into picky eating and this topic around mealtime, routine, and posture I have a brand new course that is coming out very soon. It's called Overcoming Picky Eating with Autism, and my goal in this course is to help your child expand their diet and help them meet their nutritional needs to thrive. If you want to be one of the very first to hear about this make sure you sign up for the waitlist via the link in the show notes or you can head over to my Instagram and sign up via the link in my bio.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of Nourishing Autism. I look forward to seeing you next week!
This podcast is brought to you by the Autism Nutrition Library, a one-stop hub and community for all things autism nutrition created to help you explore evidence-based nutrition approaches that have proved to be effective to help individuals with autism feel their best, do their best, and be their best.
Join now by clicking Autism Nutrition Library or by stopping by my Instagram @AutismDietitian. See you next week.
Transcribed by Descript
ABOUT Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, CLT
I’m a Registered Dietitian, Autism Nutrition Expert, and the Creator of the Autism Nutrition Library.
I work with parents of children with autism to optimize their child’s diet, supplements, and lifestyle based on their unique needs. I help expand accepted foods for picky eaters, improve digestion and gut health, find the root causes of many symptoms, and ultimately help them feel their best so that they can do their best and be their best.
Not only do I relate to families on a professional level, but also on a personal level. I have been a part of the autism community for over 20 years, as my younger brother was diagnosed on the spectrum at a young age.
I look forward to working with you to uncover the root cause of your child’s symptoms and help your child be the best version of themselves!
