What We Tried to Stop Our Son’s Chewing Habit

When my son was in elementary school, he developed a sensory chewing habit that took us years to figure out. He started constantly chewing on little pieces of paper. I’m honestly not sure if it was driven by his tactile defensiveness or his inattentive ADHD, or perhaps both, but it was constant and becoming a real problem at school.

Sensory chewing in kids is more common than most people realize, and it often goes hand in hand with tactile defensiveness or ADHD.

He would chew little pieces of paper and then put them on the floor. Then get a new one and do the same thing. By the time school was over for the day, he had tiny pieces of paper all over the floor underneath his desk.

The first grade that I remember his habit being a problem was in the second grade. His second-grade teacher noticed it first, the same teacher who would ultimately set our whole diagnosis journey in motion. We tried different things that school year to help him stop doing it. Here’s what we tried to stop our son’s chewing habit.

His teacher allowed him to chew gum in class, but that didn’t work because he would spit the gum out and not in the garbage can. We also tried sending him to school with Tic Tacs that he could suck on. This didn’t work because he would eat them and didn’t suck on them.

Since neither worked and his teacher didn’t want him chewing on paper, he started chewing on pencils. Once again, at the end of the day, he would have little pieces of wood pencils on the floor underneath his desk.

By the end of second grade, we could not solve the problem, and when he got to third grade, it was still a problem.

His third-grade teacher did not like him chewing on paper. This is the year we learned that sensory chewing in kids is actually a recognized behavior with products designed specifically to help, like sensory chewing necklaces. These can be found easily on Amazon.com using the search term Sensory Chew Necklaces.

A sensory chewing necklace has a round rubber medallion that they wear, and when they get the urge to chew, they can chew on the medallion.

Our son tried this for a week, but then he got embarrassed and stopped wearing it to school. I’m guessing the kids said something to him. You can buy sensory chewing necklaces with a block that looks like a Lego. I thought that would be perfect because he loves Legos, but he was still embarrassed to wear it.

When that didn’t work, we discovered chewable pencil toppers. We found a pencil topper that looked like a Lego. That worked pretty well for him for quite some time. Until he either lost them or they got stolen from him.

Starting in fourth grade, his teachers didn’t care. They said it isn’t a big deal if the vacuum can pick up the little pieces of paper.

He did get made fun of when he was in fifth grade, and that is when he started to hide it a little bit more. He still was chewing paper, but rather than dropping them on the floor, he would put them into his pockets. Lucky me, when I did his laundry, I would find all of these little tiny, tiny wads of paper in his pockets.

Now that he is sixteen, he still chews on things, but not like he used to. We have accepted that he likes to chew on different things, and we wouldn’t change him for anything.

Hopefully this helps anyone dealing with sensory chewing in kids. Even though the sensory chew toys didn’t work for us, they very possibly could work for you. There are so many more sensory options available now than there used to be, including fun therapy activities you can do right at home that may help redirect or satisfy that need to chew. It takes patience and trial and error, and honestly, that’s true of most decisions we’ve made around our son’s ADHD, including the medication question.