Course Overview

If your child eats from a small range of "safe" foods and trying new ones feels stressful for the whole family, this course is for you. In around an hour, Occupational Therapist Jessica Kirton walks through six sensory strategies to help your child feel safer and more curious around new foods — at their own pace, and without forcing the issue.

Eating is a much more sensory activity than it appears. Before food even reaches the mouth, a child's brain has processed how it looks, how it smells, the sound of it being prepared, and the texture as it's lifted. Once it's in the mouth, taste, temperature, texture, and the sound of chewing all combine. For some children, that combination is genuinely a lot — and a small range of safe, predictable foods can feel much more manageable than the unknown.

In this 1-hour course, Occupational Therapist Jessica Kirton shares six evidence-based sensory strategies for parents who want to help their child gradually expand the range of foods they feel safe with. The course covers the developmental steps that lead up to eating something new, why some children get "stuck" at one stage, and practical, low-cost ideas you can weave into family meals.

Each strategy comes with the underlying sensory principle in plain language, so you'll understand why it might help — and feel confident adapting it to suit your child. Most parents find that picking just one or two strategies to start with works better than trying everything at once.


What you'll explore

Across the course, Jessica covers:

  • Why some children find new foods tricky — looking at all the senses involved in eating, including the often-overlooked role of interoception (knowing when you're hungry)
  • The developmental steps from "noticing a food exists" to "eating it" — and what to do if your child is stuck at an earlier step
  • Food jags (when a child eats only one specific food, brand, or preparation) and how to support gradual flexibility
  • The Look / Sniff / Touch / Kiss / Lick / Taste hierarchy — a six-step approach where each step is a real win, even if the child never tastes the food in that session
  • Food play and food presentation strategies — including the "big plate, little plate" approach
  • Oral motor play to support comfort in the mouth
  • How to manage the sounds of mealtimes when those add to the challenge

Who this course is for

This course is designed for parents and carers of children who eat from a smaller range of foods than their peers — whether your child has a diagnosis (autism, ADHD, sensory processing differences, ARFID) or no formal diagnosis at all.

Eating is one of the topics where parents most often feel judged or worried. Many sensory-different children find new foods genuinely hard, and gradual, low-pressure approaches are more sustainable than pushing through. If you're concerned about your child's nutrition, weight, or growth, please speak with your GP or health visitor, as well as exploring the strategies in this course.


A few things worth knowing

📥 Course notes & glossary are downloadable and yours to keep.

📄 Certificate of Attendance available once you've completed the short check at the end.

🕒 1-hour course — slightly longer than our quick-tips courses. It works well to break it into a couple of sittings, and the content stays open for you to revisit.

Talk it through 1:1 with an OT

Want personal support?

If you'd like to discuss your child's specific situation in more detail, you can book a 30-minute one-to-one online session with Dr Lelanie Brewer, Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioner. A focused, friendly conversation about what might genuinely help..
Find out about 1:1 OT coaching — £45 →
Dr Lelanie Brewer

Course curriculum

    1. How to use this course

    2. Meet the course leader, Jess Kirton

    1. Welcome

    2. What we are going to cover in this course

    3. What we are not going to cover in this course

    1. The impact of eating difficulties for babies

    2. The wider effect of eating difficulties for school-aged children

    3. The impact of eating difficulties across the whole lifespan

    1. Sensory modulation and introducing new foods

    2. Interoception (Inner body signals)

    3. Gustatory System (Taste)

    4. Olfactory System (Smell)

    5. Tactile System (Touch)

    6. Visual (Sight)

    7. Auditory (Hearing)

    1. The steps to eating

    2. Developmental food continuum

    3. Food jags

    4. Family meals

    1. Hunger awareness strategies

    2. Look/Sniff/Touch/Kiss/Lick/Taste

    3. Big plate, little plate and other food presentation strategies

    4. Food play

    5. Oral motor play to decrease oral sensitivities

    6. Dealing with sounds

About this course

  • 32 lessons
  • 1 hour of video content

Lecturer

Jessica Kirton

Occupational Therapist and Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioner

Jessica Kirton is an Occupational Therapist and Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioner with 15 years of clinical experience supporting children, young people, and their families. Since qualifying as an OT in 2011, Jessica has worked across the full range of UK settings — the NHS, private practice, special schools, mainstream schools, and specialist early years intervention — alongside voluntary work overseas. She has set up OT services across schools and held positions as Lead OT, giving her a depth of practical experience across both 1:1 therapy and the wider systems around children's lives. Her courses for Sensory Help Now bring that clinical experience into a parent-facing format: practical, neuro-affirming, and grounded in the sensory integration principles she teaches.

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