Eat
Texture, smell and how the food looks on the plate often decide more than how hungry the child is. The cards below break the meal into parts that are less overwhelming to face.
♂Eating apple
A person with an open mouth taking a bite out of a red apple.
♂Eating toast
A person with crumbs around their mouth eating a piece of toast with butter.
♂Eat
A man eating a cookie.
♀Eat
A girl eating with a spoon.
♀Eat
A girl eating from a bowl with a fork.
♀Eat
A person eating a piece of toast.
About this visual support
The plate arrives and the child´s eyes lock on a single spot: that gravy creeping into the potatoes. For some kids it isn´t hunger that decides whether the fork lifts, but how things feel in the mouth, how they smell and whether they happen to touch each other. When too much hits at once, the whole meal stalls.
Visual support shifts the focus from the whole plate to one moment at a time – sit down, look, taste a bit, chew, sip something. That makes the meal predictable, and predictable is easier to handle even when the senses object. For toddlers who don´t yet have words for flavours, the cards also let them point to what works.
A concrete tip for eating: use a plate with clear compartments so different textures don´t slide together. If you want to build the whole mealtime routine with images and short pause moments, Routined offers a 14-day trial.