Help with eating/drinking food independently

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Hi my son V, is 6 years old.He does not eat/drimk on his own..to make him eat/drink i have to be after him saying eat/drink..i give him foood in in bowl with spoon , i need to continuously tell him to eat/drink..otherwise he will spill galss of milk..I tried many ways, like telling him to be independent..and used timer etc.., but nothing seems to work..Please can you please give suggessions or tricks which will make him eat/drink food on his own..
thanks
-Mannar

Has he been treated by an occupational therapist? They specialize in this sort of thing, and could help determine what the root of the problem is. For instance, is the problem that he is very clumsy, and has trouble getting the food and drink to his mouth? Are there issues with chewing and swallowing without gagging? Is it that he is very sensitive to smell, texture, and taste, causing him to avoid most foods because they actually taste disgusting to him?

You might take a look at one of these books:
Food Chaining
Just Take a Bite

They describe a feeding therapy called Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS), that is used with a lot of younger kids to help overcome eating issues.

Hi J,
There does not seem to be any physical problem with him..he just does not want to eat..he will eat his favorite foods like chips, pasta, noodles etc..fast
but when i ask him to eat rice(we r asians)and drink milk he will need reminders.
-mannar

I second checking in with an OT. When my oldest was little, he would do things like eat pasta with sauce, but not eat it if it had ground meat in the sauce. He wouldn't eat rice (not sticky rice) either. It was the very small size of the pieces that bothered him. He wouldn't eat meat unless we minced it into tiny pieces small enough to swallow (but not as small as ground meat), because he couldn't chew them very well. He could manage chips, enough though they were hard, because they break easily and get soggy in the mouth. He would eat things like yogurt, but not pudding, because the pudding was too thick for him to manage properly. We had to feed him until he was pretty old, at first because he couldn't hold the silverware and couldn't stand the sauce on his hands, and then because he was so incredibly slow while concentrating on using the silverware (that was a tough one to make myself back off on, he'd take so long that he'd get tired of trying and not eat much, but if I didn't make him do it, he wasn't going to learn). Anyway, maybe none of those apply to your son, but an OT is a good person to sort that kind of thing, just to make sure it isn't anything physical or sensory.

If it was me, I'd want to be completely sure it wasn't an OT covered issue before going purely the behavioral route.

Assuming other causes are ruled out, he may have fine motor skill issues if he can eat finger foods and nothing else. My son is 8, and just started writing with a proper grip over this summer. He is still clumsy with utensils and prefers finger foods. If you pre-cut his food and leave it "dry" (no sauces that could cause sensory issues and make his fingers messy) will he pick up the food with his fingers and eat it?

Also cups require a good deal of coordination, more than you think anyway. We were late on that skill, too b/c he would not practice it as he did not like spilling liquid on himself. Finally we figured out to get him clear, plastic cups so he could visualize where the liquid was, and it gave him confidence. If he does not like cups you could stick with juice boxes in the meantime, though I know some parents do not like juice. I think they make them for milk too.

As others have mentioned he may have sensory issues with food, so it may take experimenting to see what he will eat. For us, my son does not like soft foods with no texture, sauces, sticky foods, or foods that are mixed together. As we have gone on we have more and more exceptions t these rules, and foods he once disliked that he now eats, but it is a process of acclimation, and not nagging. We give him small amounts of foods we know to be issues, and let him touch it in the first exposure without nagging him to eat it. We continue to expose him to the food, eventually encouraging small bites after a few positive exposures. Anything more aggressive than that has not worked b/c he has aversions to these foods that must be overcome before a food will seem edible to him.

If your son has other problems like gagging or just trouble swallowing then as others have noted that is OT (occupational therapist) territory.

Spilling milk at age 6 is very likely a motor issue -- he's not spilling it on purpose to make you mad. Definitely see an OT. In the meantime, would he be willing to drink it with a straw? (My son loves "crazy straws" in funny shapes.)

Aversion to rice is very likely a sensory thing. Think about the texture of rice compared to chips, and the size of rice compared to pasta. Rice is more chewy and sticky than chips, and pasta is more slippery than rice.

We haven't solved my son's food issues -- he currently eats less than 20 different foods -- but since he is growing well I've decided to let it go for now.