Oral – Proprioceptive Input:
What is oral propriocetive input?
Oral proprioceptive input are foods and other items which provide heavy input orally.
What does someone with oral proprioceptive challenges look like?
The individual is usually seeking oral input to help with organization and calming. They may be chewing
on pencils, chewing gum, eating thick crunchy foods, chewing on thick sticky candy or resistive candy
such as Twizzlers. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
The following are items which can provide oral proprioceptive input:
Chewing gum will sometimes help to improve attending. It might also assist with sound filtering.
Resistive gum such as Quench also provides oral resistance or heavy work which will help decrease
stress and increase focusing. Quench gum is available at Academy Sports. Gatorade gum also gets more
resistive as you chew it and is available online. Spree gum is a natural gum sold at Whole Foods that is
not as resistive, but also is natural. To increase the resistance you can increase the number of pieces.
Direct supervision is required due to choking. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Mouth toys or musical instruments provide oral resistive activities to help with calming and organizing.
PDP products provide a wide selection of mouth toys that can be purchased on line. This harmonica
came from Ace Hardware. They usually carry some fun novelty items and during the holidays their
selection is even better. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Mouth toys which require use of the mouth and eyes at the same time can strengthen both systems and
will help encourage coordinated work between the two. Check out PDP products for lots of mouth toys.
This mouth toy came from The Toy Store in Lawrence Kansas. ©Sensory Scholar 2013.
This is a fun large bubble wand from Kiddle Stix in Tulsa, Ok. It is great for blowing and to encourage
oral proprioceptive input. Check online for instructions to make large bubble wands from a dowel rod
and a piece of string. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Blowing bubbles can also be used to increase eye motor control. The bubble bear can be purchased
from the therapy shoppe. The great thing about it is you squeeze his tummy and the wand appears so
you don’t have to dig for the wand in the bubbles so it is less messy. Other Disney squeeze wand bubble
characters are available at Walgreens Pharmacy. They also have a wand inside that can be pushed up.
Sensory Scholar 2013
Foods with various textures such as shredded beef jerky, beef jerky, Twizzlers or gummy bears can
provide increased heavy work and improve focusing and attending. This strip Jerky is available from
Bass Pro Shop, however I have recently also seen it at Quick Trip. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Spicy foods such as Hot Tamales or tart foods such as pickles can increase alerting, focusing and
attending. They came from Reasors grocery store. Caution not to give too many hot tamales at once
they are hot hot hot. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Blue cheese from Whole Foods is really strong and some kids like the strong taste on their foods. It is
another food that can be used to increase arousal. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
Dill Pickle flavors are just the right flavor to alert some little brains and get kids more engaged in their
activities. These are available for Target. ©Sensory Scholar 2013
These are a wonderful new product that is just hitting the market. Chewigems are a great product that
are made in different varieties such as a teardrop, circle, bracelet, dog tags and cylinders that fit on the
ends of the strings of sweat jackets. The products are available online www.chewigemusa.com
©Sensory Scholar 2013