4 year old eating sand, glitter etc in school

[elliejjtiny]

I've posted about this before, in chat. My 4 year old has global development delay and suspected autism. He was also a prem baby and was lucky to survive. He is cognitively about 2.5-3 years old

He has always put things in his mouth. I manage to mostly stop this at home with constant supervision and toddler proofing. At school he has a lot more freedom so he is eating sand, glitter, craft bits, carpet fluff etc. I've talked to the teacher, the senco and friends who work in education. They all say it's normal behaviour for a 2-3 year old and it is in line with the rest of his development. All toddlers do this and he will grow out of it.

I'm still worried though. He goes through phases of being constipated. We get him back to normal when he is at home at the weekends and then he starts having problems again. Surely this can't be good for him? Sorry for slightly disjointed post with not a lot of detail, trying to type with one eye on ds.

That is strange for them to say that. Most 2, 3, or 4yr old dc don't go around eating handfuls of sand, glitter, mud, etc. . I presume you aren't talking about a baby chewing something when they are teething.

If he is doing that, (regularly eating handfuls of non-food stuffs) it might well be pica, which is often associated with, or part of autism.

I'd second that it's probably pica.
www.autism.org.uk/about/behaviour/challenging-behaviour/pica.aspx

Can you self-refer to a peadiatric sensory OT, if not ask your GP to refer.

Thankyou. None of my others did that (he is youngest of 5) so I didn't think it was normal. It was making me feel really pathetic for struggling with him when I'm getting "don't worry, it's normal" from the professionals and "well, he's fine at school". It was easier at preschool because he went to a sen preschool and they did a lot of fundraising so they could top up his and the other children's funding and keep the ratios really high. They were used to children like my ds so they did the things that we do at home and all craft and messy play activities were very closely supervised. He never had constipation or sand/glitter in his nappy when he was there. I think we can self refer to a sensory OT here so I will do that.

Do they do anything to distract him from eating the sand etc and try to redirect him to chewing something 'acceptable' like a chewy tube or a piece of cloth?

I don't think so Hazey. I've tried at home without much success. He seems to like the feel or sound of grainy stuff or metal in his mouth but I haven't found any toys that are similar.

Hmmm, have you tried gentle brushing inside his mouth? Would he tolerate an electric toothbrush?

I used to look after a child who liked similar rough textures and I used an electric brush, which seemed to give her the same feedback as the gritty textures.

He loves having his teeth brushed, especially with an electric toothbrush. That's a great idea, I hadn't thought that the feeling would be similar, thankyou.

The child I worked with liked it on their lips, tongue and cheeks. After introducing it and redirecting them to the brush when they started to grab a handful if sand to munch on (shudder!), they used to ask for it (well tap the case i carried it in or use a card). I had a whole kit of oral feedback things.

Ds was particularly keen on hard bitey things, and I had a fab silicon necklace that he would bite down on.

We used to have a brilliant OT who had loads of stuff about sensory issues and oral feedback, including stuff about which tastes mirror particular textures, unfortunately the OTs don't recognise sensory stuff here any more!