Selective eating or picky eating is the most frustrating experience for parents and autistic or developmentally delayed children. Selective eating causes mealtime problems, food issues, and frustration. Selective eating is a more serious issue in the case of autistic or developmentally delayed children because of sensory issues, rigidity of routine, or food refusal. Applied Behavior Analysis ABA therapy offers stringent, evidence-based treatments for the expansion of eating and healthy eating support in children.
Use of ABA therapy in the management of food expansion, aversion reduction in children, and meal liking is documented in this essay.
Understanding Selective Eating in Children
Selective eating isn’t about hating food, and neither is not eating something due to color or texture, refusing foods, or failing to transition from favorite food to unfavorable food. Among the causes of selective eating are:
- Sensory Sensitivities: Excessive use of anything in the taste, or anything in the odor, or anything in the texture.
- Routine and Predictability: The autistic child likes things to be done in a particular manner, and food is problematic when it is novel.
- Limited Exposure: A child might not have been exposed to food sufficiently so that the child might even be unaware of their presence.
- Negative Past Experience: Stomach pain or choking will deter a child from food.
Whatever be the reason, ABA therapy can condition children to a more healthy and balanced diet through specially designed behavioral intervention.
How ABA Therapy Is Beneficial in Selective Eating
ABA therapy is intended to identify the cause for which a child selectively picks and conduct formal procedures of diet expansion by an individualized, evidence-based treatment process through reinforcement-based eating well behaviors.
1. Child Habit Assessment
The first ABA therapy activity is an FBA to determine the eating habits, food refusal habits, and environmental factors that affect their diet. Habits are tracked as follows:
- Non-preferred and preferred foods
- Mealtime behavior (spitting out food, gagging, food throwing, head turning away from food)
- Parent response to food refusal
- Sensory challenge at mealtime
The therapist can now develop an intervention for the child now that these areas are determined.
2. Gradual Food Exposure (Desensitization Techniques)
A gradual exposure is arranged by ABA therapy through step-by-step gradual exposure of the child towards food. Rather than pushing a child to consume new food, the therapists follow step-by-step exposure, and step by step by step by step, little by little the child gets activated with food:
- Observation of food on the plate
- Play with food through fingers
- Smelling food
- Small bites but not forced eating
- Step by step incrementally increase portion
By doing it in stages, the new food anxieties are prevented and security is obtained.
3. Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is one of the core ABA therapy approaches. The child is rewarded for trying, regardless of whether he tastes a new food, looks at it on the plate, or nips off from it. Rewards can be:
- Verbal rewards (“Great job trying the carrot!”)
- Access to something enjoyable after eating less desirable food
- Small concrete reinforcers, i.e., stickers or tokens
Increasingly more reinforcement yields more repetition of target behavior, and food-borne learning is fun.
4. Food Chaining: Anchoring Off Foods from More Preferred Foods
Food chaining is application of the principle of food introduction by anchoring food onto more preferred foods of the child. For instance:
- If chicken nuggets are their favorite food, then prep the chicken beforehand.
- If they like apple slices, then expose them to other fruits of similar texture, i.e., pears.
- This also makes them confident by dividing meals into less of a scary experience.
5. Providing Modeling and Social Learning
Imitation is how children learn. Mother, brother, or therapist can model some component of ABA therapy by consuming a new food in front of the child. When an individual is seen to be consuming a food, there are greater chances of acquisition by the child who consumes it.
Peer modeling of prompted group or table meal purchase can be used in training on large amounts of food and secondary reinforcement.
6. Meal behavior management
Inappropriate table behavior is a sequel to selective food refusal, i.e., tantrum, spilling, staying at the table. ABA procedures replace them with:
- Clear expectations: Programmed structuring of routine meal time
- Prompting and shaping: Increments in new food intake
- Escape reduction behavior: Consistency of repeated refusals
Clear rules about feeding quiets children down and enhances compliance at meal times.
7. Parent Training and Involvement
One-to-one environments do not necessarily call for the cessation of ABA therapy. Parents and caregivers also train meal skills in home environments. ABA therapists are instructed to:
- Creating a positive, non-pressure meal environment
- Providing several attempts at non-preferred food with no pressure
- Prevention of errors, for example, prevention of food refusal by providing only preferred foods
- By repeating this every day, families will see long-term benefits in increasing the child’s diet.
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Conclusion: Building a Healthy Relationship with Food
Food selection is challenging for children and families but can be changed through successful interventions. ABA intervention provides evidence-based, goal-oriented methods of instruction for training children to be more accepting of many different foods and reducing meal conflict.
With gradual exposure, reinforcement, food chaining, and behavior management, children can be helped to get a healthier and more varied diet. With consistency and patience and with the help, meal time is a healthy, enriching, and positive experience and not a struggle. If the child is picky, consulting with the services of an ABA therapist board certified provides aid and guidance with which variety and nutrition are the standard of his diet.
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