Chewing and biting in autistic toddler

[thefutureisours]

Can anyone assist with strategies to calm this behaviour in an autistic toddler. He has bitten a hole in the sky aerial cable and is constantly biting everything, including the leather sofa and us! I'm concerned for his safety. We keep all electrical wires hidden but the sky wire comes through above the windowsill so no east way to hide it. We don't use sky so should we just have the cable removed to get rid of the temptation?

Sensory chew toys?

He has loads of them and we do try and encourage him to use them. He does bite them a lot but it doesn't stop him biting and trying to bite and eat inappropriate things. He doesn't have much understanding which makes it really hard. We do try and direct the biting to appropriate toys but not always successfully.

Sounds tough! And as if he is constantly seeking sensory input.

Maybe some ideas on here, if you haven’t already tried them!

theinspiredtreehouse.com/sensory-processing-what-does-oral-sensory-mean/

asensorylife.com/oral-sensory-needs-and-preferences.html

Thanks, that's a really good article. Describes him so well. Nursery say he's the hungriest and thirstiest boy in the world as he's always eating and drinking. He picks up bits off the floor to try and eat and pulls the pictures off the wall to get the blue tac to chew. We do try really hard to redirect him to chewy toys but he has virtually no understanding so it's really hard. I really worry about him eating inappropriate items.

Gosh thats hard! My son has always been the opposite, he is extremely defensive of his mouth, nothing goes in, not even food!

Ds seems to be opposite to a lot of other autistic children we know. He is very under sensitive to noise and pain. A balloon can burst right beside him and he won't even flinch. He also rarely cries if he falls over etc. It really surprised me when I started to research his behaviour and autism came up. I always thought of the over sensitive behaviour when I thought of autism. I've learned a lot. There are so many different presentations, all with their own challenges!

Do you have an ot that specialises in autism/sensory stuff? I’m my experience the nhs has been rubbish but even an hour every few months with a private ot is worth so much