Food Stuffing, Pocketing & What to do When Baby Has Too Much Food in Their Mouth

You lot sit down to a repast with your babe and lovingly identify a picture-perfect plate on the table with two or three different types of foods, camera set up. Next thing you know you're tossing the photographic camera; your centre has stopped, and you're prepared for some hands-on back up because your infant has filled their rima oris to the brim with too much food. You're sure they'll choke.

Or maybe you are getting your baby ready for a bathroom and you lot notice your baby still has food in their rima oris…from the dinner, which was 45 minutes agone.

If this sounds at all familiar, you are not lone! When babies keep the food in their cheeks or put too much in to begin with information technology'south called food pocketing, nutrient packing, over-stuffing, or shoving. And so why do babies practice it and what can you lot exercise about information technology?

What is over-stuffing?

Over-stuffing is but like it sounds — your baby or kid puts besides much food in their rima oris and it interferes with their ability to successfully chew and swallow.

What is food pocketing?

Pocketing nutrient or food packing is when your child holds nutrient in their oral fissure for an extended amount of time without swallowing. Usually babies and children pocket food in one of a few places:

• Within either cheek
• In the very front of their oral fissure
• Confronting the roof of their oral fissure

Why do babies and toddlers shove likewise much food in their mouths?

Babies overstuff their mouth for a variety of reasons:

• They are yet learning how much food is too much.
• They savour playing and tasting the foods.
• They just don't know how to have it slow…yet.

Nutrient stuffing is common in infancy and even in toddlerhood. Our feeding specialists report seeing lots of over-stuffing in babe-led weaning infants from half-dozen-12 months, while non-babe-led weaning babies tend to over-stuff from ix-xviii months.

Food stuffing seems to exist a phase near babies go through and there's skillful reason for information technology! Your baby is learning where everythingis inside their oral cavity. Since they can'tlook at the inside of their oral cavity, they rely on touch sensation and feedback from the muscles in the natural language, jaw, and cheeks. This helps create what's known as a "map" of the mouth.

Imagine you are chewing a bite of omelet and suddenly crunch into a small bit of eggshell. A number of things happen at that moment.

1. You suspension and immediately "picture" where that eggshell is located in your rima oris.
2. You lot sift around the food in your mouth until you lot isolate the tiny eggshell.
3. You scoop information technology up and move it back to the front of your mouth with your tongue.
4. You spit it out.
5. You go along to finish chewing and swallowing the bite of omelet in your mouth.

This level of sensory awareness within your mouth takes years to hone and is incredibly of import to safely chew and swallow all textures of food.

So, how does your baby build a map of the oral cavity? Biting downwardly against a piece of food which touches multiple points in your infant's mouth at once (i.e., the tongue, gums, roof of the mouth and the lips) helps your baby relate each of these areas to one another. In fact, the bigger, firmer, and more flavorful the piece of food, the more input it gives your babe. So, when your baby stuffs too much food in their oral fissure, they tend to become a really articulate "flick" of what'due south going on inside their mouth. Aye, information technology can be scary and risky, just it has a purpose!

Julian, 10 months, stuffs a kiwi into his mouth.

What should I do when my infant puts too much food in their mouth?

At that place are two elements to consider when baby stuffs their oral cavity with besides much food: helping in the moment and helping long-term.

How to address over-stuffing in the moment:

1. Stay calm.Take a deep breath and be patient. You don't want to scare your babe and, while information technology may feel like an emergency, it is not.
2. Talk to your infant. Calmly tell them, "That'southward a little too much in your mouth, let'due south spit some out."
3. Double-decker to spit. Encourage your baby to spit out the food. In an exaggerated manner, spit out a small bit of your own nutrient with your tongue, and hold your hand in front of your babe's rima oris, ready to catch their nutrient.
4. Clear the food from the tray. Brand certain your baby does not go on to put more than food in their mouth.
5. Use gravity if needed.Lean your baby forward gently so gravity tin assist them spit out the food. If your baby pushes dorsum against you, kneel down in front end of them to encourage looking down, which again allows gravity to help them spit out the food.
6. Practise not finger sweep or try to remove the food. Permit your baby work it out. If over-stuffing turns to pocketing (where your babe isn't moving the food around at all and instead storing it in their mouth somewhere) use the strategies described below to get that food out of their oral fissure earlier leaving the tabular array.

Julian, 10 months, shoves a whole kiwi half into his mouth.

How to address over-stuffing long-term:

With all things feeding, you want to go along the long game in listen. The long-term goal is to raise an independent, good for you, happy, confident eater.

• Eat with your baby.Babies dear to lookout man and learn. Assistance them quickly get by the over-stuffing stage by sitting downwardly and eating together. They will watch and learn from you!
• Talk to your infant.Every time you lot encounter your baby starting to over-stuff, tell them: "That looks like a lot of food in your mouth. Finish that bite beginning." Or: "Slow down, you accept too much in your oral cavity."
• Let them investigate.One time your baby spits out the wad of nutrient, don't take it away! It may seem gross, but looking at it, touching information technology, and even allowing your baby to pick it back upwards and try once again tin be extremely valuable learning. You can point to the mass of nutrient and say: "See, that was too much. Take a smaller bite."
• Go big! Around nine-12 months former, your baby is likely chewing meliorate and knows how to spit out nutrient, if needed. Kickoff coaching them to take bites off larger pieces of foods. Babies around 9-12 months erstwhile love to pick up small pieces of nutrient and do their pincer grasp but dicing foods into small pieces at every meal for 9-24-calendar month-old babies denies them the adventure to practise the important skill of taking a small bite from a large piece. As always, show them how it's done. If your babe needs support, agree softer foods at the front of their mouth for front teeth to seize with teeth through, or teach them to use their molars with more resistive foods, like meat, where they will learn to bite, hold, and pull.

Information technology tin can be tempting to effort to prevent over-stuffing by only putting one seize with teeth at a time on your baby'due south tray. However, we don't recommend this since in that location are some benefits to over-stuffing and it's non a long-term solution. Regardless, your babe will probable become through a stage of over-stuffing once you cease limiting the amount of food on the tray.

Why do babies and toddlerspocket food in their cheeks or mouth?

At that place are a few reasons why a infant or toddler might pocket nutrient or concur food in their mouth without swallowing. The most common reason is only defective the sensory awareness and/or tongue coordination to fully chew and consume certain foods. Instead, they chew or suck on the food, and pocket it.

Some babies may accidentally pocket food, or the food moves to a identify in the mouth where the babe can't quite get it back out. Other babies are purposeful in their pocketing — holding the nutrient in the same spot every fourth dimension because they don't feel confident about safely swallowing.

Just like over-stuffing, nutrient pocketing is often totally normal in 6-12-month-former babies as they map and learn the boundaries and spaces of their oral cavity. Pocketing should happen less equally your baby builds the "map" of their rima oris and develops the tongue coordination and jaw strength to successfully chew and eat foods. It's very possible to see pocketing beyond 12 months, especially with challenging-to-chew textures.

Is food pocketing dangerous?

Well, sort of. Any fourth dimension nutrient is held in the mouth for an extended period of time or the oral fissure is and then full of food that information technology tin can't be fully chewed, at that place is increased gamble of choking.

Over-stuffing the oral cavity maylook more dangerous and scarier to a parent because you lot cancome across information technology. Pocketing tin seem less dangerous possibly because information technology's not as obvious and easy to miss. Withal, food pocketing may be more apropos than over-stuffing. The longer the nutrient sits in your infant'southward oral fissure, the more likely your baby or child will have moved on to something else, potentially unsupervised and forget all well-nigh the nutrient, which is a serious choking hazard. Pocketing also carries a significant risk for tooth decay and cavities every bit food sits for an extended flow of fourth dimension confronting your kid's teeth.

What should I exercise if my baby or child pockets food?

If your babe or toddler is frequently pocketing nutrient and storing information technology in their cheeks similar a chipmunk, y'all will demand to address this in the moment to go the food out of their oral fissureand help them break the habit over time.

How to address food pocketing in the moment:

1. Watch your baby closely.If, after a infinitesimal or so of chewing, they have not swallowed, remind your infant to swallow the food. You can testify "swallow" past swallowing a fleck of your ain food (or drink) while running your hand from your lips, along your throat, and down to your stomach.
2. Coach your baby.If demonstrating swallowing doesn't piece of work, tell your baby, "You can spit that out," and evidence how it's done in an exaggerated manner. Spit out a small bit of food with your tongue while holding your mitt in forepart of your baby's mouth to catch the nutrient.
3. Offering a drink.If coaching doesn't work, offering a small-scale sip of water, breastmilk, or formula to drink. Yous are trying to assist wash downwards the food and clear the mouth. Ideally, offer an open cup rather than a straw cup. An open up cup allows liquid to enter your kid'due south oral fissure right at the front to articulate all areas. When we sip from a harbinger, the liquid enters the oral fissure further dorsum and may miss the food if it's sitting towards the front end of the mouth.^[1]
4. Carefully remove the nutrient.As a last resort, if the above steps do not piece of work, you lot will need to help your infant get the nutrient out of their mouth. This should be done with extreme care, as any time yous put your fingers or an object in your infant'south oral cavity you increase the risk of pushing that food back into their throat, which is a significant choking risk. Withal, leaving food to sit in your baby'south mouth afterward a meal also increases the run a risk of choking. You can clear the food with your finger or with a toothbrush. Either fashion, you want to first know where the food is sitting in your infant'due south mouth, so effort to wait past asking them to open up. Carefully go into your baby'south rima oris along the side (the inner cheek), not in the middle of their mouth, and sweep the nutrient out.

How to accost pocketing to break or forestall the addiction:

1. Build awareness.Yous want to help your baby or toddler build sensory awareness within the mouth, likewise as develop tongue coordination and jaw force to chew nutrient and motility it dorsum to swallow. This comes with lots of practice eating both easy and challenging-to-chew foods. Long, unbreakable stick-shaped foods are ideal for this: 1) Beefiness or pork ribs with most of the meat cut off and all gristly or loose bits removed; 2) mango pits with most of the fruit cut off; 3) Corn on the cob with most of the kernels cut off. All of these are extremely hard, if not impossible for a babe or young toddler to bite through. However, gnawing or sucking on these foods build forcefulness and coordination in your baby'south jaw and natural language muscles, while also giving lots of sensory input to the jaw, gums, tongue, and roof of the mouth. This helps build that mental "map" of the mouth! Your infant won't go much nutrition from these foods, so consider them exercises for your baby'south mouth.
2. Keep it like shooting fish in a barrel.When it comes to actually chewing and swallowing foods, your baby may pocket less with soft, well-cooked foods. Dry textures (like bread or craven without sauce) may be challenging. Avoiding dry foods for a few weeks can help your baby practice chewing and moving nutrient back to consume, rather than develop a habit of pocketing challenging-to-chew or dry foods. In a few weeks, try again with more than challenging foods.
3. Pump upward the flavor!Offer your baby lots of foods with slightly tart or sour bright flavors: oranges or lemons, mashed blackberries, marinara sauce, and tangy yogurt are all examples. These types of foods "wake upward" the muscles of mouth and lead to increased saliva flow, which set up your infant to swallow.
4. Regular molar brushing. Brushing your baby'southward gums, teeth, and tongue twice a twenty-four hours besides "wakes up" and helps to "map" the rima oris.
5. Talk to your babe.Share what you see: "That bite is really chewy. There is still food in your mouth. Yous demand to proceed chewing and so swallow." Or, "You lot demand to keep chewing that bite and then swallow it."

When should I seek support for pocketing or over-stuffing? Who tin can assistance me with this?

It may be time to seek support if:

• You are regularly finding food in your baby or toddler'due south oral cavity one-half an hour or more after meals.
• You take tried the strategies above for a calendar month or so and are seeing no progress.
• Your baby is over-stuffing and pocketing at every meal with all types of foods.

Discuss options with your pediatrician. You can discover support with an occupational therapist or voice communication therapist who has expertise in pediatric feeding, eating, and swallowing.

Read on for more information on creating a safe environment, safe food shapes and sizes, and how to tell the difference between gagging and choking.

Reviewed by:

Kary Rappaport, OTR/L, MS, SCFES, IBCLC

The content offered on SolidStarts.com is for informational purposes only. Solidstarts is not engaged in rendering professional person advice, whether medical or otherwise, to private users or their children or families. No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever exist used equally a substitute for straight medical advice from your doctor or your medical or health professional person, nutritionist, or expert in pediatric feeding and eating. By accessing the content on SolidStarts.com, you acknowledge and agree that yous are accepting the responsibility for your child's wellness and well-being. In return for providing you with an array of content "baby-led weaning" information, you waive any claims that you lot or your child may have as a result of utilizing the content on SolidStarts.com.

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