Smell and taste

Smell travels directly to the part of our brain that controls our emotions, memory and learning. It’s linked to our sense of taste – for example, food can lack flavour when we have a cold.

How this can look different

Sensory avoiders may:

have a restricted diet – only eating bland food and drink
avoid places or people that have a strong smell (or what seems to be a strong smell to them)
gag at certain smells or tastes or fear them
find cleaning their teeth distressing

Sensory seekers may:

sniff and smell everything including people
seek out strong odours and tastes including things that are inedible
lick things

How to help

You can help a child with a restricted diet by supporting them to gradually become more accepting of different foods.

You can use Food For Fun sessions to introduce different textures, flavours and smells to the child in a fun way. The focus is not on eating the food, just exploring it. These sessions could include:

finger painting with whipped cream, yogurt, angel delight or anything similar. Your child can use a brush or breadstick to draw or make marks with if they do not want to use their fingers
fruit and vegetable printing
making shapes and pictures out of vegetable sticks
threading pasta tubes or Cheerios onto a piece of string or pipe cleaner

If your child is seeking a sensory need, you may need to simulate their mouth in other ways. These could include activities like:

blowing bubbles
drinking fizzy water through a straw or blowing into it
using musical instruments such as harmonicas, recorders or echo microphones
giving them particularly chewy or crunchy foods

Sometimes children may use a chewable toy such as a chewy. This can lower the chance of them putting inedible objects in their mouth and makes the behaviour more manageable.