For many families, getting a child to try a new food can feel like the hardest part of the day. It can be tempting to think of eating as a single action, either your child eats the food or they do not. But eating is not one step. It is the very last step in a long and gradual process, and understanding that process can change the way mealtimes feel for everyone.
This is the idea behind the Steps to Eating hierarchy. In this post we explain what it is, why eating involves so much more than putting food in your mouth, and how you can use these steps gently at home.
What is the Steps to Eating hierarchy?
The Steps to Eating hierarchy comes from the SOS Approach to Feeding, developed by paediatric psychologist Dr Kay Toomey. It maps out the many small steps a child moves through on the way to eating a new food.
The central idea is simple and reassuring. Before a child can comfortably eat something new, they usually need to become familiar with it in lots of other ways first. They need to be able to be near it, look at it, smell it, and touch it before tasting and eating feel possible.
When you see eating this way, a whole world of progress opens up. A child who lets a new food sit on their plate without becoming upset has taken a real and meaningful step, even though they have not eaten a single bite.
Why eating is more than just eating
Eating is one of the most complex things we ask young children to do. A single mouthful draws on many systems at once. Your child has to manage the way a food looks, the way it smells, the sound it makes, how it feels in their hands and their mouth, and how it tastes, all at the same time.
For some children, especially those with sensory differences, this is a lot to take on. A food that seems ordinary to an adult can feel overwhelming or unpredictable. This is not fussiness or bad behaviour. It is a genuine response to a big sensory experience.
The Steps to Eating hierarchy honours this. Rather than jumping straight to “have a bite”, it lets a child build a relationship with a food one comfortable step at a time.
The Steps to Eating, from tolerating to eating
The steps are often grouped into five broad stages, moving from simply being near a food all the way through to eating it. Each stage is a step closer to eating, and every one is worth celebrating in its own right. The examples below show what each stage can look like in real life.
1. Tolerates
The first step is being able to share a space with the food, with no expectation of eating it at all. This often begins with the food simply being in the same room, then at the table but part of the way across from your child, then at the table just outside their own space, and eventually being able to look at the food when it is right in front of them. For a child who finds a particular food challenging, being able to sit comfortably near it is a genuine achievement.
2. Interacts with
Next comes getting involved with the food in low-pressure, hands-on ways. Your child might help to prepare or set up the food, use utensils or a container to stir or pour food or drink for other people, do the same just outside their own space, and eventually use utensils or a container to serve some onto their own plate. Interacting builds familiarity without any pressure to eat.
3. Smells
Smell gives your child a lot of information about a food and is closely linked to taste. This stage moves from noticing a food’s smell when it is somewhere in the room, to smelling it at the table, to noticing it in the space just in front of them, and finally leaning down or picking the food up to smell it on purpose.
4. Taste
This stage gently brings the food closer to and eventually into the mouth, and it often starts with touch. Your child might touch the food with one fingertip, then their fingertips and fingerpads, then to other parts of the body such as an arm or shoulder, the top of the head, the chin and cheek, the nose and underneath the nose, the lips, and the teeth, before bringing it to the tip or top of the tongue. Working towards the mouth one small step at a time helps tasting feel safe and manageable.
5. Eating
Eating is the final stage, and it too moves through smaller steps. Your child might lick their lips or teeth, give the food a full tongue lick, bite off a piece and spit it straight out, hold a bite in their mouth for a few seconds before spitting it out, bite and chew a few times and then spit out, chew and swallow some while spitting some out, chew and swallow with a drink to help it along, and finally chew and swallow the food on its own. Because so much groundwork has been laid in the earlier stages, eating becomes a much smaller and safer leap.
How to use the Steps to Eating at home
You do not need any special training to bring this approach into your kitchen. A few gentle principles go a long way.
- Meet your child where they are. Notice which step your child is comfortable with for a particular food, and let them stay there without pressure. Progress happens at their pace, not on a schedule.
- Celebrate every step. Touching, smelling, and playing with food are all real progress. Letting your child know these count, without making a big fuss, keeps mealtimes positive.
- Keep it low pressure. Try to avoid insisting on a bite or turning food into a bargain. When there is no pressure to eat, children are often more willing to explore.
- Get involved together. Cooking, shopping, and setting the table all give your child low-stakes ways to interact with food.
- Offer familiar foods alongside new ones. A trusted “safe” food on the plate gives your child something comfortable to fall back on while they explore something new.
- Go slowly. Moving through the steps can take time, and that is completely normal. There is no prize for rushing.
If your child eats a narrow range of foods, or tends to get stuck on one food for a while and then refuse it, the Steps to Eating hierarchy offers a gentle way forward. Rather than trying to leap straight to eating something new, you can widen your child’s range one small, manageable step at a time.
When to seek support from an occupational therapist
Some children need a little more support to move through these steps, and that is okay. An occupational therapist who works with feeding can help you understand what is behind your child’s eating patterns and build a plan that suits your family.
At Learn for Life, we work from a neuroaffirming approach. That means we begin by understanding your child’s sensory preferences and needs, rather than trying to change who they are. We look at the whole picture, including sensory processing, oral motor skills, and the mealtime environment, and we partner with families to make eating feel safer and more enjoyable.
If mealtimes have become stressful, or you would like guidance on introducing new foods, we would be glad to help.