Af­ter the se­ries of an­noy­ing po­lit­i­cal di­ver­sions over the last weeks, I have de­vel­oped a se­ri­ous case of “politi­cian aver­sion” and de­cid­ed in­stead to move on to some­thing called “oral aver­sion dis­ease” in chil­dren, and which has noth­ing to do with “foot in mouth dis­ease,” en­dem­ic among politi­cians.

Oral aver­sion de­scribes the avoid­ance or fear of eat­ing, drink­ing or ac­cept­ing oth­er sen­sa­tions around the mouth like tooth­brush­ing or face-wash­ing. Like eat­ing or drink­ing, oral aver­sion is learned be­hav­iour. We tend to think that eat­ing or drink­ing is in­stinc­tive. It is not. It is learned. Even breast­fed ba­bies need to be taught how to feed. Some learn eas­i­ly and with­in hours of birth. For oth­ers it may be more dif­fi­cult. Some moth­ers may think their ba­bies are feed­ing well on­ly for some­one to no­tice that the child is not gain­ing weight. These ba­bies may be go­ing to the breast and mak­ing suck­ing move­ments but, like politi­cians, it’s a sham. They aren’t do­ing any­thing but suck­ing mon­ey out of the coun­try. They are quite ef­fec­tive at that.

Most ba­bies learn from the mo­ment they are born that eat­ing and drink­ing are fun and pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, a ba­by or small child learns that eat­ing or drink­ing is un­com­fort­able, un­pleas­ant or caus­es anx­i­ety.

Just like lis­ten­ing to politi­cians can make you sick to your stom­ach, any­thing that makes a child build up an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween eat­ing, drink­ing and feel­ing bad­ly caus­es aver­sion.

One of the most com­mon caus­es of this is med­ical trau­ma. Sick ba­bies are eas­i­ly trau­ma­tised oral­ly and when that hap­pens, they don’t go through the nor­mal, pleas­ant feed­ing process and may give prob­lems to eat or drink. One of the com­mon ways to trau­ma­tise a ba­by is by plac­ing a feed­ing tube through its mouth or nose in­to its stom­ach. If this is ever nec­es­sary for med­ical rea­sons, it should be re­moved as soon as pos­si­ble and, in the mean­time, ef­forts should be made to keep the ba­by’s suck re­flex strong by plac­ing a dum­my soaked in breast­milk in the mouth.

Politi­cians do the same sort of thing when they give out jer­seys and blue notes. It keeps peo­ple’s mouths sweet.

Sim­i­lar things hap­pen if a breath­ing tube has to be placed down the ba­by’s wind­pipe or even if some­thing as sim­ple as an oxy­gen mask is need­ed for the first few days of life. Lat­er on, even a bad-tast­ing med­i­cine (and the trau­ma sur­round­ing the giv­ing) or a neb­u­liz­er for asth­ma can have the same ef­fect, oral aver­sion.

A corol­lary of this is the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­tro­duc­ing new foods that ex­ist be­tween the sixth and twelfth month of life. Many chil­dren who do not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to savour new food flavours, tex­tures, colours, shapes et cetera dur­ing these months, refuse to do so lat­er on in life. They haven’t learned to eat prop­er­ly. In the sev­en­ties, I was con­front­ed with mal­nour­ished two-year-olds at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, whose par­ents had re­fused to give them rice, peas, ed­does or callal­loo as ba­bies. They had to be taught to eat prop­er­ly.

Ill­ness or dis­com­fort is an­oth­er cause of ba­bies or chil­dren de­vel­op­ing oral aver­sion. Chil­dren with gas­troin­testi­nal dis­or­ders, eg. milk al­ler­gy, re­flux or con­sti­pa­tion, that cause the child to feel ill, are as­so­ci­at­ed with oral aver­sion. Res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems like asth­ma and chron­ic nasal con­ges­tion can cause prob­lems with eat­ing. Dur­ing every swal­low, one stops breath­ing. That is dif­fi­cult to do if you are hav­ing prob­lems breath­ing. Eat­ing be­comes tir­ing.

Then there are chil­dren with forms of brain dam­age eg cere­bral pal­sy or dif­fer­ent brain func­tion like autism, who ei­ther have dif­fi­cul­ty learn­ing to eat or to con­trol the mus­cles that we use to eat. There are oth­er chil­dren who while oth­er­wise nor­mal, have a very high aware­ness of oral sen­sa­tions. They sim­ply can­not tol­er­ate lumps in food or dif­fer­ent tex­tures or strong flavours or smells. Oth­ers have the op­po­site prob­lem, low aware­ness and need to stuff food in­to their mouth in or­der to “feel” food bet­ter. These chil­dren can be­come aver­sive to foods with the char­ac­ter­is­tics they find over­whelm­ing.

There is a spe­cial sub­set of chil­dren with oral aver­sion. These are chil­dren who have ex­pe­ri­enced a chok­ing episode and de­vel­op a pho­bia to­wards foods. They are like adults who have been fooled once too of­ten by politi­cians and de­vel­op a “po­lit­i­cal pho­bia.”

Chil­dren or adults who have de­vel­oped pho­bias af­ter chok­ing on food or the po­lit­i­cal non­sense go­ing on in the coun­try, need spe­cial ther­a­py to help them deal with the char­ac­ter­is­tics they find over­whelm­ing or un­ap­peal­ing. But un­like adults who some­times have to get rid of the politi­cians they as­so­ciate with un­pleas­ant­ness, chil­dren can ben­e­fit from psy­cho­log­i­cal ther­a­py.

I am afraid there is sim­ply no ther­a­py avail­able for us.