Sensory personalities and feeding in children

Each child is unique

Each child is so unique and just like adults have different preferences, interests, likes and dislike so do our children.
We have heard of temperaments, different personality types, IQ, EQ and now I want to tell you about different sensory personalities. 

A concept created by an OT, Meg Faure to help parents understand how there are fundamentally four different ways for a child to perceive their sensory environment.
Considering that eating is one of the greatest sensory experiences a human will experience it is important to understand your child’s sensory personality.

There are four common types of sensory personalities:

Sensory sensitive- very affected by his sensory environment. Perceives senses at a heightened level eg noise, light, touch and of course taste. These children struggle to tune out uncomfortable senses as well as experiencing these senses at a more intense level. 

Slow to warm up - these little ones take a while to accept a new sensory experience in food they often needed repeated exposures to certain new flavours or textures.
They struggle to move from one food state to another. Eg smooth purée to more textured purée. They need to trust the new experience or new flavour or texture before they will be willing to actually swallow it.

Social butterfly - these children are responsive to the sensory environment and actually seek sensory input and love to experiences different tastes and flavours.
They are enticed with new food experiences and are very keen to eat in a social environment. Eating together with your child is very important for them. They will mimic what you eat and do with food.

Easy going - these children are very regulated with their sensory environment and are able to tolerate a lot of food flavours, smells and textures. These children are seldom picky eaters. But because they are so easy-going it’s easy to forget to spice up their food range to encourage being adventurous.