Can changing parent’s behaviour around mealtime help restore infant feeding disorders and normal growth?
A new education program for parents is aimed at reducing stress and control issues around mealtime conflict. Children with Infantile Anorexia experience failure to gain weight or weight loss over one month, experience a rare interest in food or expression of hunger, the behaviour is detected before 3 years old, and they do not have trauma to the oropharyngeal area or other medical conditions.
"A treatment that focuses on helping toddlers with internal regulation of eating can decrease mother-toddler conflict and struggle for control during feeding and improve weight gain in such children," said Irene Chapoor, MD, principal investigator and director of the infant psychiatry and eating disorders program at Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC.
The researchers studied 70 toddlers who were from 12-42 months old and had been diagnosed with Infantile Anorexia. Four social workers then administered differing intervention with the mothers and fathers, without the children present.
