5 Eating Issues

   

Eating and feeding difficulties occur on a continuum that begins at birth
and that has the potential to follow us through our lives.
Problems with feeding and weaning, fears and refusal,
fads and selective patterns are the norm in pre-school children.
In most instances the result of experimentation, stubbornness,
imitation, food preferences, or benign phases, these behaviors
will be outgrown, with or without parental intervention,
and are not cause for concern. Some of these problems, however,
may have adverse effects on the child’s physical and
mental growth and development and have the potential to become lethal.
Is your child in danger? [1]

The incidence of food refusal associated with illness is reviewed,

not illness by illness, but according to those factors that affect the ability to eat;

normal learning about eating, aversive learning about eating,

regulation of appetite, children’s cognitions about foods,

and parental anxiety about intake.

Diseases affecting the major organs are likely to generate food refusal

based on at least one of these factors, if not all of them.

However, some minor disease processes can also

have a major impact on food acceptance.

Child temperament also affects food acceptance

and may interact with the disease process to produce food refusal.[2]

The Childhood eating disorders

The following paradigm is taken from a book by Lask and Bryant-Waugh ,

called Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders

in Childhood and Adolescence.

Food avoidance emotional disorder (FAED);

An emotional disorder where food avoidance is the prominent feature.

These are primarily mood, not food, disturbances.

Food becomes the pathway through which the child expresses anxiety or depression.

Functional dysphagia; fear of vomiting, swallowing or choking.

An aversive event brings on this condition.

Selective Eating.

The child limits food intake to a very narrow range of preferred foods.

Typically, these are foods that are high in carbohydrates.

Weight is generally not adversely affected,

and they do not share a preoccupation with weight and shape.

Growth may be affected, and parental responses can lead to more problems.

Restrictive Eating. These children eat little, don’t enjoy food,

though show no mood disturbances.

Though they do not actively avoid food,

these children’s difficulties will be seen at puberty.

Food refusal; refusal tends to be episodic, intermittent,

or situational, affecting the quality of a child’s relationships

Pervasive refusal syndrome; refusal to eat, drink, walk, talk,

or care for themselves in any way over a period of months.

Life threatening; requires hospital admission.

Appetite loss due to depression

Compulsive overeating

Anorexia nervosa (and atypical and sub-clinical forms)

Motivated by a fear of gaining weight, becoming fat.

Bulimia nervosa (and atypical and sub-clinical forms.) Rare in childhood.

How to…

How to hide and disguise vegetables

REFERENCES:

[1] Empowered Parents  http://www.empoweredparents.com/1childhoodonset/childhood_05.htm

[2]  Food Refusal Associated With Illness Gillian Harris,Jacqueline Blissett and Rebecca Johnson (2000).

Child Psychology and Psychiatry Review,
Volume 5, Issue 04, November 2000 pp 148-156
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1360641700002343