What is pouching?

What is pouching?

Sometimes when eating, children can hold food in their mouth or pouch it in or around their cheeks. Children can hold food in their mouth for a few minutes or sometimes even longer, before trying to eat it.

Holding food in the mouth for longer can increase the risk of choking.

Why does this happen?

Pouching can happen if children are orally hyposensitive. This means that they do not receive as much sensory information in their mouths. Children may pouch food to help give them the feedback they are wanting. It may also be part of their wider developmental profile.

What can I do to help?

You can help your child by:

• Offer regular verbal or visual prompts
• Allow your child to achieve sensory regulation by making suitable adaptations to the environment
• Have a good mealtime practice including appropriate positioning and supervision during mealtimes
• Make sure mealtimes are positive by avoiding any pressure and making it an enjoyable experience
• Offer your child smaller bitesize of food to help minimise any risk as they hold food in their mouth
• Pace your child throughout the mealtime may help avoid pouching
• Allow your child extra time to eat their food
• Offer stronger flavours to give them some more information. For example, strong cheesy flavours, sour flavours such as lemon, spicy flavours such as chilli flakes or crushed black pepper
• Offer more texture when safe to do so

You can find information on how to understand your child’s sensory needs on our sensory service website.