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the chewer in my class
The biting thing may just be a form of a sensory disorder. Is she overly sensitive to tags in her clothing? Does she have to touch everything? Does she love the way smooth things or rough things feels? You may not know but as a baby was she overly sensitive to light and noises? Maybe even now, large crowds or excess noise easily distracts or confuses her. I teach first grade and had a kiddo who ate things like erasers, bits of paper, etc.. (The real challenge came when I found her with a staple in her mouth.) We did two things: immediately after the staple incident (same day) I arranged for our class to have a snack but withheld the snack from her. We discussed the logical consequence of bad things in our mouth means no good things later. I also made sure to follow up later after several day with no problems with a snack just for her. I also gave her a stretchy keyring (the kind that fit on your wrist but are plastic and stretchy like a curly cue). That is her chew toy so to speak. If she feels the urge to chew, I want her to chew on something appropriate. She ended up repeating first grade and is doing much better but she still has occasional urges to chew on things. My other question would be about the food. Does she horde food at home or is that just a school issue? With kids adopted from 3rd world countries, food hording can be related to lack of food in their home countries. Kids from foster care can exhibit similar hording behaviors. I've heard people say that having food always available can help as it allows the child to let go of their fears about not having enough food. If it's just a school issue, than it would seem to be more than a hording issue. If you were seeing it at home too, it might be worth a try to have a bowl of healthy snacks available in her room, on the counter, maybe even in a special place at school. (If you knew this was the issue and could show the school why you wanted such accomodations made. As a teacher, I can tell you without evidence about what you think is wrong, you may very well get wierd looks because they won't really understand what you are talking about.)
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