Feeding environments

Think about some of your favorite restaurants or places to eat? What do they have in common? What is the seating like? What sounds can you hear? What type of food do they serve? What does it look like visually? What smells are there?

Sensory inputs are around us all the time, and we all process them differently. We can be over-responsive, under-responsive, and/or cravers of certain sensory inputs. Sensory processing is not just for our neurospicy/neurodivergent populations, but impacts each and every one of us who have nervous systems.

That being said, think about your environment for eating at home. Is it set up to be a conducive environment for you? What if you add in a child whose nervous system differs from yours? What values/desires do you have for your family at meal times?

In our household my husband and I were raised to sit at the table to eat. We sat at the table until we completed our meals. We want to have family dinners with our children, but we have one child we suspect has ADHD and a younger child who follows her older brother. Is our mealtime completed 100% at the table? Absolutely not yet, we have a long-term goal to have our kids sit with us for the duration.

Right now, they spend time at the table with us, but then walk around the space and finish their bites maybe playing with a toy in the next room. We learned that yelling/using loud voices to attempt to get our point across is not conducive to our children sitting and eating with us. We have a saying at our house that they will either sit with us, or they will eat. We prefer they eat, as long as they are safe chewing/swallowing in the position they get themselves into.

What’s important to you and how will you adapt to multiple nervous systems in one space attempting to complete an activity as complex as feeding?