Ideas for Kids Who Seek Oral Input

- For children with sensory processing deficits, oral sensory seeking behaviors help with self-regulation.

- Chewing, mouthing, and sucking helps to self soothe and is a strategy that children use to help to calm themselves if they are experiencing sensory overload.

- Oral sensory seeking, which includes mouthing, chewing and sucking on objects, is commonly reported alongside other sensory processing issues.

- Your child’s mouthing, chewing, & sucking oral seeking behaviors may simply be an exploratory stage of their development, but they may be trying to self-soothe and calm themselves.

Ideas For Home:

- Start Tracking: times of sensory oral seeking behaviors to look for patterns (periods of stress, home or social situations, boredom, hunger, time of day).

- Using Sports Bottles or Straws: encourage sipping and sucking.

- Blowing Whistles: encourages blowing out air to hear the whistle.

- Using Musical Instruments: such as harmonicas, trumpets, flutes.

- Blowing Bubbles: again encourages blowing.

Oral Input Tools:

Types of Chew Toys:

- If your child tends to chew on their back teeth, a longer thinner oral motor tool may be more appropriate.

- If they chew on their front teeth, using a more circular oral motor tool may work better for them.

- Chew products come textured and non textured and scented and not scented.

- Chew products also come in different strengths from soft to extra extra strong.

- Not one oral motor product is the correct product for all, it is all down to the preference of your child.

The Various Types of Oral Products on the Thinking Toys Website:

- Necklaces

- Bracelets

- Grabbers

- Z-Grabbers (vibrating)

- Pencil Chew Tops

- Chewable Toothpicks

- Chewy Tubes