Daughter will not swallow her saliva.

[sassy8824]

My daughter has been spitting all the time for the past year but now she is doing it all day and night. She is 5 yrs old. She carries around a towel now when we are home and continues to spit in it because she was using tons of paper towels, toilet tissue,etc. She says she cant swallow her spit because it makes her feel like she is going to throw up. Has anyone heard of this?

[Weelids]

I realise this post is over 12 years old but my five year old is doing the exact same holding saliva in his mouth and always needing to go spit it out and we don’t know what to do about. How did you solve this in the end?!

[Paxiled]

At 5 he should be able to answer if you ask him why he's doing this.  Did you ask, and if so, what did he say?  I ask because if it's something bothering him about swallowing, say, that isn't really a thing and he doesn't respond well to you saying it's nothing, just swallow, sometimes hearing it from a pediatrician will just make it go away.  I had a couple of problems when I was a kid and I had pretty passive ignorant parents and that's how my problems went away.  Also, have you told him to stop doing that, it's gross, and if so, what did he do?  I ask that because that may be an indication of some kind of problem brewing that help might be called for.

[Giovana79]

My son 12 years old is doing that, we read that it is a sign of depression or anxiety associated with stress. He does not want to swallow his own saliva. We read that it is all emotional and the muscle get tight. The only thing we can do is to talk about the process of saliva and how humans body work to make him comfortable to swallow. He does that every single day after 6pm.

[angelinamarina]

My daughter did this for a while..but it was after a really bad sore throat and she was afraid to swallow for a long time.  I think the doc can help you with this.

[supermomma531]

Have you taken her to her doctor. What does he/she say? Maybe there is something truly wrong.Does she get some sort of funny taste in her mouth? Or maybe her reflex is really sensitive. Maybe she have to have some sort of therapy to learn how to swallow her saliva. How does she do when eating? Or drinking? This sounds kind of serious. Good Luck and Take Care!

[sassy8824]

Thank you, I will look it up! No, she does not have any other obsessions, but I think you may be on to something! Thank you!

[RockRose]

I hadn't heard of this until now,  but when I googled "can't swallow spit" I got a LOT of hits.  You have to wade through the pornographic ones about swallowing vs. spitting (I think we all can guess what that's about)  there are a lot of them with your daughter's problem.

It sounds to me like an obsessive compulsive disorder related thing.  Does she have other compulsions?