Parents Reporting Children Who Are Experiencing Parosmia, Seek Support and Understanding
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect people across the world. The overarching repercussions of the virus are still being understood but experts do suggest that now children are not experiencing distortions in the sense of smell (parosmia) and it is starting to have a detrimental affect on their eating habits and well-being.
As we reported across our social media channels last month, Dawn Kafi’s son Malisse has experienced these consequences first-hand. She stats in the Liverpool ECHO:
“He started saying food was off and it continued. I cooked all his favourite foods but he said everything smelt.
He said food tasted like sewage and poo and water tasted like rotten eggs and he would keep throwing up.
It wasn’t just food. It was supermarkets, the smell of cars going past it all made him retch. I didn’t know what to do or what it was.
I stopped cooking so there were no unpleasant smells in the air and we tried everything to get him to eat.
He’d been really good with Covid, he had no symptoms and he always wore his mask because his brother is severely disabled and he kept everyone safe, but all of a sudden, he just stopped eating.
He would look at it and start gagging. He couldn’t cope with the smells and physically couldn’t eat. We couldn’t go to the supermarket, it was horrendous.”
Our Director of Medical and Research Affairs Professor Carl Philpott who has noticed more people across the UK and overseas contacting him about their children experiencing this smell disorder, suggests that:
“Establishing what the triggers are and what tastes OK is really important.
There are lots of common triggers, for example cooking meat and onions or garlic and the smell of fresh coffee brewing, but these can vary from child to child.
Parents and healthcare professionals should encourage children to try different foods with less strong flavours such as pasta, bananas, or mild cheese – to see what they can cope with or enjoy.
“And it may sound obvious, but children could use a soft nose clip or hold their nose while eating to help them block out the flavours.”
Fifth Sense have collaborated with parents and with professionals to create a Learning Zone Information Sheet. We have also established a Parents Support Group – if you would like to join, please get in touch info@fifthsense.org.uk
To access Information Sheet #11 Supporting Children and Young People with Parosmia, please click the button below and it will download onto your desktop:
