2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
A long time ago, when I was still consulting children in the children's hospital, my parents brought me a boy of 2, 5 years old. The boy refused to eat, and since "all good kids should eat well," his parents pushed "tasty and wholesome food" into him 4 times a day every day. Well, you can easily imagine what it looked like. The kid half an hour before the meal, realizing that there will be "feeding" now, began to get nervous and anxiously look into the kitchen. This was followed by the pursuit of the child around the apartment, pulling him by the legs from under the bed, dragging him to a chair in the kitchen. There, the child turned around, did not open his mouth, yelled good obscenities, spat soup or porridge at his parents and at the end of this enchanting action, the child vomited everything that the parents could shove into him during the meal. This went on 4 times a day.
The boy, of course, began to lose weight, to lag behind in development, his parents began to acquire neurosis themselves due to the fact that such 4-fold battles were exhausting them, and there was no solution. The more they insisted, the less the child ate.
I told my parents that my son is likely to have childhood anorexia. But they didn't really believe it. From the point of view of many people with anorexia, children do not eat on purpose, to harm their parents or to please someone. But this is not the case.
Yes, young children also have anorexia, but this is a completely different anorexia, not like young beauties. It is called infantile or infant anorexia, and is associated with the child's refusal to eat without ideas about the beauty and perfection of the body.
The disorder is often caused by the wrong way of organizing the child's meal. If we summarize the bulk of such reasons, then we can say that the disorder arises because the child is forced to eat when he does not want to. The baby, due to this state of affairs, forms a negative attitude towards food intake in general. And such problems are by no means uncommon; they occur to one degree or another in 34% of children under 3 years of age.
Types of childhood anorexia
According to external (clinical) signs, several types of infant anorexia nervosa are distinguished:
1. Dysthymic. In this case, the child begins to be capricious, whimper, and has general displeasure with the feeding process.
2. Regurgitation. This type is characterized by regurgitation without any reason (absence of gastrointestinal diseases and hypertensive-hydrocephalic syndrome) during feeding or after sufficiently large amounts of food.
3. Active refusal to eat. With active refusal, the baby turns away, refuses to swallow or suck, spits out, closes his mouth, turns, does not allow himself to put anything in his mouth. Throws away the spoon, throws food and dishes off the table.
4. Passive refusal to eat. In case of passive refusal, the child is disgusted with the normal age-related diet - meat products, cereals, vegetables or fruits, to be fastidious in food. Sometimes there is an addiction to unusual products - lemons or grapefruits. Sometimes children refuse food that requires chewing, hold it in their mouth for a long time without swallowing or do not eat at all.
Parents, of course, are very nervous if the child does not eat, although it is quite normal that the child's appetite may not be the same at different periods of life.
Reasons for refusing food
Firstly, if a child is sick, even with a "trifling" SARS, his appetite may be reduced, not to mention the fact that gastritis or simply indigestion may.
Secondly, there are conditions when you want to eat less than usual. For example, in the summer in the heat. Since the child cannot often explain that he does not want to eat, parents perceive his refusal to eat as a simple whim that needs to be overcome, and then more.
Thirdly, if a child is tired, he can be easily excitable, easily succumb to negative emotions.
Fourth, the child may really not like the food. Yes, it happens with the big and the little ones. Unloved products go inside hard.
Why is this behavior formed?
Imagine yourself as a child. You don't want to eat, and maybe you even feel sick, and someone big and strong shoves food into you and also scolds you for not wanting to swallow food that is disgusting for you. What are you going to do? Spit, yell and swear, or at some point you will still vomit. The child is the same. Only in babies this stereotype of behavior is very quickly consolidated. Children do not understand anything about healthy foods and the right diet. Until a certain age for them there is only "hungry" or "full". And they perceive all force-feeding as an incomprehensible punishment from the parents. The older the baby gets, the more actively he tries to avoid this sophisticated food torture, so the kitchen often becomes a battleground.
But what is to be done? A child cannot be hungry! He needs to be fed and all parents feel this responsibility. The less the child eats, the more the parents' anxieties and feelings of guilt for not fulfilling parental responsibilities grow.
What to do if the child has noticed signs of anorexia?
1. It is necessary to observe the regimen of food intake, but without fanaticism. If the child already wants or does not want to eat yet, you need to treat this with understanding. The next feeding can be shifted.
2. It is advisable to feed a child with eating problems in small portions, if he wants more, it is better to give him a supplement later.
3. If the child has not finished the offered portion, then it is not necessary to make a tragedy out of it. Forget about the "clean plate society" from the stories about Lenin's grandfather.
4. Do not force the child to eat what he does not want to eat, no matter how useful it may seem to you. It turns out especially badly if the child eats the hated porridge, and the rest of the family has pancakes with jam.
5. Remove all desserts from the table while the child is eating the main course.
6. Total feeding time should not exceed 30 minutes. If during this time you have not coped with the portion, it's okay.
7. Give new food in small pieces. Do not force your child to eat a lot of it, even if the food is very wholesome, tasty, and healthy. Just try it first. Children are often suspicious of new food, especially if it looks different from the usual one.
8. Do not scold your child for vomiting at the table. Stop feeding immediately and switch to other activities.
9. If the child has a negative attitude to food, try to change the whole ritual of eating. Go with the baby to the store, choose with him new dishes that he likes. Change the feeding place, give nice napkins or eat with him at the same time. So that the child sees that eating is not at all a threatening procedure, but a good time with his parents.
10. Sometimes it is useful to make a "assortment" of different products for the kid, laying them out in several pieces on a portioned plate. Free will when eating is an inspiration for many children.
11. Do not fight with your child while eating or punish while eating. It is also desirable that the parents refrain from mutual disputes during the feeding of the child.
12. Be careful with snacks: crackers, chips. In general, it is best for a child to avoid these foods. Even if "all children eat it." Especially if there are nutritional problems. Not only chips can spoil the appetite, but also juices, milk, fruits that some parents give to children in between meals.
Of course, everything will not work right away. It takes both time and patience. But everything is gradually returning to normal.
Written for the site letidor.ru
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