Come mealtime, numerous parents are at their wit’s end when it comes to persuading their child to eat a proper meal. Erratic work schedules and distractions like TVs and videogames only make their job more difficult.
Three-year-old Nitin (name changed) is rarely hungry and easily distracted.
Come mealtime, his mother has to turn on the television so that her son will eat during advertisement breaks. She is worried because he is falling back on the average height and weight for his age.
Sound familiar? Come mealtime, numerous parents are at their wit’s end when it comes to persuading their child to eat a proper meal. Erratic work schedules and distractions like TVs and videogames only make their job more difficult.
To help parents troubled by their children’s feeding patterns, a new diagnostic tool that classifies the type of feeding difficulty and helps identify and manage such children has been introduced in the country last month.
The diagnostic tool launched by Abbott Nutrition — Identification and Management of Feeding Difficulties (IMFeD), is based on a classification developed by Dr Benny Kerzner, chairman, department of gastroenterology and nutrition and Dr Irene Chatoor, professor of psychiatry and paediatrics at the Children’s National Medical Center, Washington DC.
The classification of feeding difficulties is as follows: poor appetite because of organic causes, due to parental misperception, fundamentally vigorous, apathetic or withdrawn child, highly selective food behaviours, colic that interferes with feeding and fear of feeding. This tool is currently in use in 11 countries across the world.
“It has been found that 60-80% of mothers worldwide are concerned about their child’s feeding habits. Paediatricians however, are not trained to handle queries about how to feed a child,” said Dr Kerzner.
IMFeD is a diagnostic tool which involves filling a questionnaire by both parents and doctors, which then indicates the kind of problem the child suffers from.
In a one-week study conducted between February 28 to March 7 in 14 sites across the country, 26 children were diagnosed. Of these, 16 had poor appetite due to fundamentally vigorous behavior, two suffered from highly selective feeding and two children had parents with misconceptions.
“We are planning to screen 40 patients in each site for the study. We have clearance from the ethics committee too,” said Dr Mukesh Sanklecha, consultant peadiatrician and neonatologist, Bombay hospital.
Dr Sanklecha said that he has been able to respond to parents better and add seriousness to the approach, encouraging better follow-ups from parents.
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