Feeding Problems in Infants and Children

This article focuses on factors related to decreased food intake of infants and children, but does not address anorexia or bulimia nervosa. The nature of feeding problems may be behavioral, organic, or a mixture of both. Behavioral problems that affect intake have their roots in 1) parental or cultural expectations for food intake and body habit, 2) parental anxiety about weight gain in a vulnerable child or insecurity about parental skills, 3) power struggles between parent and child that manifest in eating habits, 4) conditions that may have enhanced the gag reflex, such as prolonged orotracheal intubation or a nasogastric tube, 5) failure to establish links between hunger, food intake, and satiety in infants who had not been fed orally for a relatively prolonged period of time at a critical age, and 6) anxiety or depression. Organic causes that lead to decreased food intake include swallowing problems (neurologic or conditioned hypersensitive gag, structural anomalies of the oropharynx, dyscoordinated swallow, painful swallow, and obstructed swallow ), respiratory distress, excessive fatigability (heart failure, respiratory failure), and lack of appetite (many chronic systemic illnesses). At particular risk for feeding problems are infants of premature birth, children with craniofacial anomalies, those with certain genetic syndromes, and those with neurologic involvement. An evaluation by specialists is recommended for children with obvious behavioral problems but for whom the usual recommendations have failed and for those in whom symptoms cannot be explained solely by behavioral issues or in whom organic causes are suspected. The evaluation preferably should be performed by a team specialized in pediatric feeding disorders or otherwise by an occupational therapist or speech pathologist with expertise in the area of feeding.