1,720,983 research outputs found
THE CHILD WHO RARELY SHOWS SIGNS OF HUNGER: A PROSPECTIVE CLINICAL CASE FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD TO SCHOOL AGE
No full textApproximately 25 percent of otherwise normally developing young children experience eating problems. These may not only be disruptive to the child’s physical and emotional development, they also may affect the whole family. Assessment of an infant’s eating difficulties should begin with an extensive clinical interview with the caregivers to evaluate the infant’s eating difficulties, the developmental, medical, and family history. This interview should be followed by direct observations of the child with the caregivers during feeding and play. Observations of play interactions enable the clinician to determine whether problematic feeding interactions reflect more fundamental problems in the infant-parent relationship. A prospective clinical case of a child who showed early lack of appetite/interest in food and malnutrition and who was followed-up during school age, will be discussed. The child’s assessment at age 2 and later at age 10 will be based on the PDM-2 framework, and the treatment model of “facilitating internal regulation of eating” will be described. This treatment model of “facilitating internal regulation of eating” helped the parents establish regular mealtimes, refrain from distractions and from coaxing the child to eat, and set limits on inappropriate mealtime behaviours, which helped the child to become more aware of internal signals of hunger and fullness, to increase her food intake and gain weight. At follow-up, at 10 years of age, the child demonstrated no eating problems, good physical and emotional health.
The follow-up assessment of feeding and eating disorders is based on a multiaxial approach that includes, for children ages 0-3, the child’s emotional development and regulatory-sensory processing capacities and the quality of parent-infant relationship, and for children ages 4-11, a child’s mental functioning profile, the emerging personality and the subjective experience of child symptom patterns. Attending to these interrelated components is pivotal in conceptualizing effective treatments
The Relationship Between Prenatal Parental Representations and Child’s Temperament
No full textObjectives: Several studies have underlined that the quality of parental
representations during pregnancy may affect the caregiving system (Foley
and Hughes, 2018; Vreeswijk et al, 2015) and consequently the child’s
emotional and physiological regulation. However, few studies have focused
on the differences between mothers and fathers and how their quality of
prenatal parental representations may be associated with the postnatal
perception of their child’s temperament. Therefore, the aim of this longitudinal study is to examine whether mother’s and father’s mental representations of herself/himself as a parent, assessed at the seventh month of pregnancy (Time 1), are different and whether the perception of infant temperament at 3 months (Time 2) is different with respect to the prenatal parental representations.
Methods: The sample consisted of 40 couples (80 parents) and their healthy babies (60% boys, 40% girls). At Time 1, parents were interviewed by means of the Interview of Maternal and Paternal Representations During Pregnancy Revised (IRMAG-R; IRPAG-R; Ammaniti et al, 2013). At Time 2, mothers and fathers completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R; Gartstein and Rothbart, 2003) to describe their infant’s temperament.
Results: Analyses showed no statistically significant differences with respect
to maternal and paternal representations. Both mothers and fathers with unbalanced mental representations perceive their infant as more negatively
responsive compared to parents with balanced mental representations.
Conclusions: The findings of the present study underscore the importance of parents’ prenatal mental representation on the perception of their infant’s temperament. In the presence of prenatal not coherent representations of the child and of themselves as parents, the parents tend to attribute more negative regulatory skills to their child, jeopardizing the development of a sensitive and responsive parent-infant relationship
A cross-sectional study of father-daughter/son interactions from 1 Month to 3 years of age with the feeding and play scales: Exploring the psychometric properties
Full text linkThe quality of father-infant/toddler interactions has become a focal point in studies of early child development. However, studies targeting early father-infant/toddler interactions may be hampered due to the lack of specific and validated measures; indeed, most of the applied observational instruments were originally designed to evaluate mother-child interactions. In a sample of 142 fathers-infant/toddler dyads, the current study aimed to test the reliability of the Feeding and Play Scales, which were initially created to assess mother-infant/toddler interactions. Also, we compared the father-infant/toddler feeding and play interactions at different developmental stages, from 1 month to 3 years of the child's age, and we evaluated the effect of the child's gender on the father-infant/toddler feeding and play interactions. Both scales showed satisfactory internal consistency, confirming that the measures are reliable in the evaluation of father-infant/toddler feeding and play interactions. Analyses showed significant correlations between the subscales of the Feeding and Play Scales, significant effects of the child's age and significant gender differences. Our research shows that the Feeding and Play Scales are promising instruments to study the role of fathers in the development of normal and disordered feeding in infants and toddlers
Feeding Disorders of Infancy: A Longitudinal Study to Middle Childhood
No full textObjective: To evaluate over time feeding behavior and emotional–behavioral functioning in a sample of children diagnosed with Infantile Anorexia (IA) and a group of typically developing children; and to investigate the relationship between maternal psychological functioning and the children’s feeding patterns and emotional-behavioral functioning. Method: Seventy-two children diagnosed with IA and 70 children in the control group were prospectively evaluated through several measures at two, five, and eight years of age. Results: Our findings revealed partial improvement in the nutritional status of the children with IA. However, they continued to show ongoing eating problems and, in addition, anxiety/depression and withdrawal, as well as rule-breaking behaviors and social problems. There were significant correlations between the children’s eating problems and their emotional difficulties and their mothers’ increased emotional distress and disturbed eating attitudes. Discussion: Our longitudinal study points out that the natural course of untreated IA is characterized by the persistence of difficulties in eating behavior and emotional–behavioral adjustment in both, the children and their mothers. Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc
Failure to thrive in toddlers with lack of interest in eating and food and their cognitive development during later childhood
Full text linkBackground: Experiencing Failure to Thrive or malnutrition in early years has been associated with children later displaying low Intelligence Quotient (IQ). The current study's aim was to examine whether Failure to Thrive in Toddlers with Lack of Interest in Eating and Food, a subtype of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder as defined by DSM-5, which has also previously been identified as Infantile Anorexia (IA), was associated with poor cognitive development outcomes during later childhood.
Methods: The IQs and growth parameter of 30 children (53% female) previously diagnosed and treated for IA at 12 to 42 months of age, were reevaluated at a mean age of 10.0 years (SD = 2.1 years) and compared to 30 matched control children. Children's growth was assessed using Z-scores and their cognitive development was measured using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-4th Edition.
Results: None of the growth parameters were significantly related to IQ. Further, IQ scores of children previously diagnosed with IA and control children were not significantly different. However, the education level of children's fathers had a significantly positive effect on IQ.
Conclusions: Our study highlights the disjunction between growth parameters and IQ within our sample. Overall, our findings suggest that the primary target of intervention for these children should be the parent-child conflict around the feeding relationship, rather than a focus on the child's weight itself. Finally, our results confirm the relevance to include fathers in the intervention of these children
- …
