My 4.5 year old can't chew food!

by Jeffey
(Melbourne, Australia)

Just as the title says, my 4.5 year old daughter can't/doesn't understand chewing and she has a really nasty gag reflex.

Basically, she was never a major fan of food from the get go. She use to eat things such as toast, chicken, chips. The normal stuff. Up until 18 months when things took a turn for the worst. She spat her dummy out and wouldn't take it again. We thought it was strange because she loved her dummy but from there is a was a slippery slop.

She went from not wanting her dummy to not wanting solid food to not wanting puree foods and wanted to live on her bottle forever.

We eventually managed to reintroduce puree and mashed foods around the 2 year old mark.

She is prone to chocking and gagging on her food when it's a texture that she is not use too.

We have managed to get her off of her bottles completely but she will only eat mash potato and gravy. 8+ month old spaghetti that we gave to cut up. wheetbix that must been smoothed out and other soft treats like yogurt and ice cream.

She has been diagnosed with sensory processing disorder after years of telling doctors that it isn't just a phase that she is going through.

When eating anything off of her very limited menu she will not chew the foods at all. We have shown her and explained to her the concept of chewing but when we get her to show us she will put the food in her mouth, swallow and then show us her she chews but won't do it with the food in her mouth.

She is currently going to a few specialist that seem to be out of ideas and she goes to food classes that play with different textures.

When she chokes on her food it is very scary. I thought we were going to lose her a few weeks back because it got that bad.

We are at our wits end and don't know what to do. Please, if anybody out there has any suggestions or similar stories, please share. We want solutions but we also don't want to so alone in this.

Thank you in advanced.