Does your child refuse to eat most food?Does s/he only like certain food?Or maybe you noticed only particular textures or temperatures?Well, you know what I know exactly how you feel.
My son is particularly sensitive to different things in his mouth, and he will not eat a majority of food.
Even what he will eat must be at a particular temperature.
He has what they like to term an over-responsivity to textures in his mouth.
So how do we help such a child? Some people are of the philosophy you force the child, now I'll explain two things why this is not good.
First of all, I think those who say that are not fully aware of the extent and you can not force such a child.
For instance just yesterday I was drinking a carbonated drink and my son wanted it.
I knew he was not going to like it but he REALLY wanted to taste it.
I thought it would be good just to expose him to it, so I let him taste it.
Literally, the second it touched his tongue he spit it out and started to cry.
I felt very bad but this was him wanting it.
Don't force it and think it's made up by them.
It is real.
Second of all, if you force them you can really crush the child.
They feel something is different with them and they don't need additional pressure.
Another approach is to give them what they want and will eat and slowly,I repeat very slowly, make adjustments.
For example, something I'm working on with my son.
He doesn't like bits of pieces in his food, like fruit in his yogurt, or even cereal and milk.
So I have for example a smooth yogurt like vanilla flavored that is completely smooth and each day I put a VERY small amount of VERY fine bread crumbs.
Each day adding a LITTLEbit more.
I can not emphasize the need to do this EXTREMELY slowly.
If you push too much then it can all backfire.