Feeding children with Down's syndrome

A retrospective chart review of forty-nine children with Down's syndrome between the ages of six months and six and a half years seen before 1970 showed that 80 per cent had problems related to food or feeding. An interdisciplinary intervention program utilizing group sessions introduced in 1970 is described. In twenty-one children, most of the nutritional, behavioral, and environmental problems surrounding food previously encountered in children with Down's syndrome were successfully prevented or remedied. The incidence of obesity in Down's syndrome was reduced but not eliminated. Except for parental susceptibility to food faddism, most professional concerns regarding food and eating were non-existent in sixteen of the children reevaluated in a follow-up six years after the intervention program.